1. Ivan Bagramyan was among several Armenians in the Soviet Army who held the highest proportion of high-ranking officers in the Soviet military during the war.
46 Facts About Ivan Bagramyan
1. 2.
Ivan Bagramyan was given his first command of a unit in 1942, and in November 1943 received his most prestigious command as the commander of the 1st Baltic Front.
3.
Ivan Bagramyan did not immediately join the Communist Party after the consolidation of the October Revolution, becoming a member only in 1941, a move atypical for a Soviet military officer.
4.
Ivan Bagramyan's parents decided to enroll him at a recently opened local two-year school because they could not afford to send him to the local gymnasium.
5.
Ivan Bagramyan graduated with honors and was slated to become a railway engineer within a few years when events in World War I changed his life.
6.
Ivan Bagramyan was well aware of the military situation at the Caucasus front during the first months of the world war.
7.
Ivan Bagramyan began reading harrowing reports in the Russian press of what was taking place against his fellow kinsmen across the border: the Committee of Union and Progress-led government had embarked on a campaign to carry out a genocide of the Ottoman Armenians.
8.
Ivan Bagramyan desperately sought to join the military effort but because he was only seventeen and a railway mechanic, he was not subject to conscription.
9.
Ivan Bagramyan's opportunity came on 16 September 1915, when he was accepted as a volunteer in the Russian army.
10.
Ivan Bagramyan was assigned to the 116th Reserve Battalion and sent to Akhaltsikhe for basic training.
11.
Ivan Bagramyan participated in battles in Asadabad, Hamedan and Kermanshah, the Russian victories here sending Ottoman forces reeling toward Anatolia.
12.
Ivan Bagramyan graduated in June 1917 and was assigned to the 3rd Infantry Regiment, stationed near Lake Urmia.
13.
Ivan Bagramyan chose to join the 11th Soviet Army and was appointed a cavalry regiment commander.
14.
Ivan Bagramyan visited her and the two decided to get married at the end of 1922.
15.
In 1923, Ivan Bagramyan was appointed commander of the Alexandropol Cavalry Regiment, a position he held until 1931.
16.
Two years later, Ivan Bagramyan graduated from the Leningrad Cavalry School and, in 1934, from the Frunze Military Academy.
17.
In 1940, when General Zhukov was promoted to commander of the Kiev Military District in the Ukrainian SSR, Ivan Bagramyan wrote a letter asking to serve under his command.
18.
Ivan Bagramyan's paper, "Conducting a Contemporary Offensive Operation," apparently impressed Zhukov, as he promoted Ivan Bagramyan to become the head of operations for the Soviet 12th Army based in Ukraine.
19.
Ivan Bagramyan took part in the great tank battles in western Ukraine and the defensive operation around Kiev, in which Kirponos was killed and the entire Front captured by the Germans.
20.
Ivan Bagramyan was one of a handful of senior officers who escaped from the encircled Front.
21.
Ivan Bagramyan was then appointed chief of staff to Marshal Semyon Timoshenko and along with future Soviet premier Nikita Khrushchev, then a political officer, coordinated the fighting around Rostov.
22.
Ivan Bagramyan protested vigorously and said that if his competence was in question, then he should instead be given a field unit to command.
23.
The 16th Army at the time was composed of four divisions and one infantry brigade and in light of the new offensive, Ivan Bagramyan's force was given two extra divisions, an infantry brigade, four tank brigades and several artillery regiments.
24.
Ivan Bagramyan argued to Stavka that its planning was too audacious in the hopes of repeating a successful encirclement like that in Uranus.
25.
Ivan Bagramyan claimed that his forces would be overstretched and would have difficulty in attacking the entrenched German positions in Bolkhov.
26.
Ivan Bagramyan appealed to his front commander Vasily Sokolovsky as well the Bryansk's M A Reyter, both of whom rejected his proposal.
27.
Stalin, belatedly realizing that Ivan Bagramyan was implying that the two would be unable to coordinate harmoniously due to a conflict of holding the same rank, agreed to Ivan Bagramyan's suggestion and promoted him to the rank Army General.
28.
Ivan Bagramyan agreed to have the Second Baltic Front return a tank corps and an infantry division that was taken from the 11th Guards, thus bolstering the forces under Bagramyan to a total of four armies: 11th Guards, 39th, 43rd and the 4th Shock.
29.
One of the key elements to Ivan Bagramyan's success was that many of the soldiers were part of veteran units that had been trained in the Arctic regions of Siberia, enabling them to easily push through entrenched defenses the Germans had spent months preparing.
30.
Ivan Bagramyan himself was only informed in May 1944 of his role in the offensive.
31.
Ivan Bagramyan was tasked with attacking the forces in the pocket, cross the Daugava River and, along with Third Belorussian, clear the surrounding areas of Vitebsk of German forces.
32.
Ivan Bagramyan appealed to his superiors once more, Zhukov and Alexander Vasilevsky, to have the First Baltic Front move westward to help eliminate the Third Panzer Army, thus splitting Army Group North in two.
33.
Ivan Bagramyan attempted to reduce those levels primarily by maintaining the element of surprise in operations.
34.
Ivan Bagramyan proved correct, as in early June 1944, the 43rd achieved success in its attack.
35.
On 22 June 1944, Bagration began as Ivan Bagramyan proceeded in moving westwards as previously planned.
36.
Ivan Bagramyan spoke with Vasilevsky, who agreed to change the plans if his theory and intuition proved correct.
37.
Vasilevsky, keeping his promise, appealed to Stalin to allow Ivan Bagramyan to move to Daugavpils but he refused.
38.
Vasilevsky in turn, took it upon his own initiative and gave Ivan Bagramyan the go ahead.
39.
However, with the loss of 4th Shock Army, Ivan Bagramyan was left shortchanged since his promised 39th Army had not only not arrived but was composed of only seven divisions.
40.
Ivan Bagramyan proposed to Stavka to launch a full-scale offensive towards Riga but the former rejected his plans, stating that the armies of Second and Third Baltic Fronts would have already pushed Army Group Center to Prussia by the time of the offensive.
41.
Ivan Bagramyan was head of the Military Academy of General Staff.
42.
Ivan Bagramyan spent much of his time writing articles in military journals on Soviet strategic operations and most notably, co-authored the six-volume work on Soviet involvement during World War II, The Soviet Union's Great Patriotic War.
43.
Ivan Bagramyan retired on 25 April 1968, and was transferred to the post of General Inspector in the Group of Inspectors General of the Ministry of Defence of the USSR.
44.
In 1979, another book of Ivan Bagramyan titled My Memoirs was published and was based on the first and second volumes.
45.
However, Ivan Bagramyan was ill and died a few months later, on 21 September 1982, at the age of 84.
46.
Ivan Bagramyan was buried with full military honors at the Kremlin Wall Necropolis in Moscow.