Soviet Forces

Young Rokossovsky.

Konstantin Rokossovsky as a 19-year old soldier in the Imperial Russian cavalry, 1916. In the late-1930s, now a general and advocate of the "modernising" strategy of Marshal Tuchachevsky, he was fortunate to survive to Great Purge of the Red Army, of which Tuchachevsky was number one target and victim. Released from prison, and appointed Major-General just prior to Operation Barbarossa, he went on to enjoy a brillaint career in the Great Patriotic War, being promoted to the rank of Marshal of the Soviet Union in 1944. Rokossovsky is a controversial figure as far as his involvement in Polish affairs is concerned. He was the commander whose forces "stalled" opposite Warsaw (the city of his birth - his father was Polish, his mother Russian) in 1944, refusing to afford any assistance to the Warsaw Uprising. Whether this was due to the exhaustion of his army, or to orders from Stalin, or to his personal inclination, or to a combination of some or all of these, remains unclear. Postwar, he played a major part in the "Stalinisation" of Poland (with all that this implied) in the (Stalin-imposed) post of Polish Minister of National Defence and Marshal of Poland. Following his return to the Soviet Union, Rokossovsky continued to serve in prominent posts up to his retirement, in 1962. He died 1968, aged 71.