But first, before we take a closer look at the life and work of this outstanding man, let’s go back to the younger days of the legendary Marshal. 

Georgy’s mother was born into an equally struggling peasant family. When Georgy’s parents got married his mother was 35 and his father had already turned 50. For both it was a second marriage because they had lost their spouses early on. Mother was a very strong woman easily lifting and carrying 80-kilo grain sacks. They say she had inherited her physical strength from her father who, getting under a horse, had no problem lifting it up. No matter how hard Georgy’s parents labored, the family still lived from hand to mouth. The year Georgy turned six, the grain harvest was poor, just enough to last the family till mid-December.  Father and mother earned just enough to buy bread, salt and pay the debts. The neighbors helped them with food which was a traditional gesture of friendship and solidarity among the generally struggling Russian peasantry. With the advent of spring things started getting better as fishing in the local rivers was going well and Georgy, a fine angler, would bring in huge hauls which he generously shared with the neighbors. Georgy started working in the fields from an early age doing almost as well as the adults did… 

The lady that owned the workshop assigned Georgy to clean up the place, shine the shoes of the facility’s owners and their children and, of course, to learn the trade.  The apprentice boys got up early in the morning and quickly washing up, got the workplaces ready for the day.  At 11 p.m. the boys went to bed sleeping right on the floor. During the fist couple of months Georgy was very homesick missing his loved ones whom he only saw again four years later. Georgy was a good student but the shop owner never missed a chance to beat up the boys for the tiniest mistake. Georgy was not spared either and he spent his every spare hour to expand his knowledge of other subjects too. 

When the Bolsheviks took power in October 1917 Zhukov volunteered to the Red Army. The Civil War over, he started making a very successful military career. In 1933 he already commanded a cavalry division and five years later he was already riding high as deputy commander of the Byelorussian Military District.

At 4 a.m. on June 22, 1941 Nazi hordes crossed the Soviet border at the start of what has since been known the Great Patriotic War. The surprise German attack spelled tragedy for the Red Army which, caught flat-footed, was suffering terrible losses. 

In those critical days Josef Stalin decided to put Georgy Zhukov at the head of the Western Front that was defending Moscow. The situation was absolutely critical, more than 600,000 Soviet soldiers had already been taken prisoner and seven Soviet armies had ceased to exist along with bulk of their tanks and artillery… 

The war now going into its closing phase, Georgy Zhukov developed another major operation codenamed Bagration that aimed to drive the Nazi invaders out of this country. For that he was awarded his Second Gold Star of a Hero of the Soviet Union.

There was no stopping the crushing Russian advance now… Looming ahead now was the daunting task of taking Berlin. Never before did the Soviet Army have to storm such a big and strongly fortified city. There were 13 Russian armies brought in to do the job. On May 2, 1945, after weeks of fierce fighting, Berlin finally fell. Its remaining defenders, 70,000 in all, laid down their weapons. The war was over… 

The initial clash came already in 1945 when Beria’s deputy, Viktor Abakumov, arrived in Berlin and arrested several high-ranking members of Zhukov’s staff. There was nothing political in the arrests though since the detained Generals were all accused of misappropriating confiscated German property. Without even bothering to figure out what had happened, Zhukov released all the detainees and sent Abakumov out of the city.  Incensed by the Marshal’s heavy-handed treatment, Abakumov returned to Moscow and shortly after, was appointed  State  Security Minister by Josef Stalin who was  apparently alarmed by the growing popularity of his victorious and at times refractory generals.  Not surprisingly, Marshal Zhukov was the first to feel the pinch. Abakumov had first-hand knowledge of how the Soviet military really worked and had everything he needed to intimidate the less cooperative generals. 

In 1948 Josef Stalin exiled Zhukov to command the Urals Military District which he ran until Stalin’s death in 1953.  Right after the dictator’s demise, Nikita Khrushchev ordered Zhukov back to Moscow and made him deputy defense minister. Several months later Georgy Zhukov took active part in the arrest and subsequent execution of Lavrenty Beria whom Khrushchev viewed as a serious rival barring his way to the top. Besides, Beria’s long record of bloody reprisals against dissidents and his rise to power was fraught with new purges of innocent people…

The first seven years of his retirement looked more like an exile. Zhukov was constantly being watched by state security agents and his role in the war was consistently being underrated. The culmination of that hard-hitting campaign of defamation and hush-hush was the publication of a six-volume history of the Second World War where his name was all but omitted. Incensed by all that, Zhukov started writing his own memoirs but it wasn’t until 1965, already after Khrushchev’s ouster, that people were again talking about him as a great World War Two hero. Zhukov started getting invitations to all sorts of conferences and meetings, his articles began to appear in the Soviet press, but the terrible pressure and stress of the war and post-war years were now taking their toll… In 1967 Zhukov suffered a severe stroke from which he never fully recovered. At 2.30 p.m. on June 18, 1974, Marshal Georgy Zhukov died and was buried near the Kremlin Wall on Red Square with all honors reserved to an outstanding statesman.

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Illustrations: Marshal Georgy Zhukov. Photograph Album. “Planeta”, Moscow, 1984