Sergey Fyodorovich Akhromeyev (; May 5, 1923 – August 24, 1991) was a Soviet military figure, Hero of the Soviet Union (1982) and Marshal of the Soviet Union (1983).
When he was the first deputy chief of staff of the Soviet Army, he formulated a military plan to invade Afghanistan. He later served as Chief of the General Staff of the Soviet Armed Forces from 1984 to 1988 and as chief military adviser to General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union Mikhail Gorbachev. A member of the State Committee on the State of Emergency during the 1991 Soviet coup d'état attempt, Akhromeyev died by suicide after the failure of the coup.
Early life
Sergey Akhromeyev was born on 5 May in 1923 in Vindrey, a village in the Tambov Governorate of the Russian SFSR (now Mordovia), in a family of Russian ethnicity. His father fell under dispossession and died in the late 1940s in Central Asia. His mother, after divorcing her husband in 1928, left with her children to Moscow, where she worked at the plant in Krasny Bogatyr.
Career
World War II
In 1940, he graduated from the 1st Special Naval School in Moscow and in the same year began military service, enrolling in the M.V. Frunze Higher Naval School. He took additional training at the naval base of the Baltic Fleet in Liepāja, in recently Soviet-occupied Latvia. Akhromeyev was a Naval Infantry junior officer on the Eastern Front, serving with distinction during the Siege of Leningrad, and was wounded and suffered frostbite. He continued his studies at the M.V. Frunze Higher Naval School.
Enrolled in August 1942 as a cadet in the courses of lieutenants at the 2nd Astrakhan Infantry School, which he graduated in the same year. From May to August 1942 he was a cadet with the Black Sea Fleet, serving as part of the gunnery unit on the ship. He then served as commander of a rifle platoon of the 197th Army Reserve Regiment of the 28th Army, and since 1943 as an adjutant senior rifle battalion of the same regiment on the 4th Ukrainian Front.
At one point he was ordered to guard and hold a road on which the German Army would be trying to advance. Despite a bloody battle, he was able to accomplish the task. Relating the story during a meal with Secretary of State George Shultz and Ambassador Ken Adelman in Reykjavík during the Reagan Administration, Akhromeyev told Shultz that his accomplishment was not only a great sign of his patriotism, as Shultz suggested, but also was because had he abandoned the road, Stalin would have had him shot. He was decorated for his participation in the defense of Leningrad.
From July 1944, he was commander of a motorized battalion of machine gunners of the 14th Self-Propelled Artillery Brigade of the Reserve of the High Command in the Kharkov and Moscow Military Districts. On 1945, he graduated from the Higher Officers' School of Self-Propelled Artillery of the Armored and Mechanized Forces of the Red Army.
Akhromeyev recalled his war experiences: "A total of 18 months, I have never been in a house, even when the temperature is as low as minus 50 degrees celsius. I have been sleeping outside in two winters, and I have never had a warm day. Always fighting, always starving. Moreover, there are so many dead. 8 out of 10 boys of my age are dead. Of my 32 middle school classmates, only one of my classmates and I survived."
When the war ended in 1945, he was the commander of a tank battalion.
Post-war service
After the war, from June 1945 to September 1945, he was deputy commander of the SU-76 Self-Propelled Artillery Battalion. From September 1945 to February 1947, he commanded a tank battalion of the 14th Separate Tank Regiment of the training center. From February 1947, commander of the ISU-122 battalion of the 14th Heavy Tank-Self-Propelled Regiment of the 31st Guards Mechanized Division in the Baku Military District in Azerbaijan SSR.
In 1952 he graduated from the IV Stalin Military Academy of Armored and Mechanized Forces of the Soviet Army. From July 1952, he was the chief of staff of the 190th Tank-Self-Propelled Regiment in the 39th Army of the Primorsky Military District. In August 1955, he commanded tank regiments in the Far Eastern Military District. From December 1957 to December 1960, he served as deputy commander, chief of staff, and commander of the 36th Tank Division in the Belarusian Military District. From April 1964, he served as commander of a training tank division.