Hovhannes Bagramyan



Hovhannes Khachatury Bagramyan (December 2 [O.S. November 20] 1897 – September 21, 1982), also known as Ivan Khristoforovich Bagramyan, was a Soviet Armenian military commander and Marshal of the Soviet Union. During World War II, Bagramyan was the first non-Slavic military officer to become a commander of a Front and was among several Armenians in the Soviet Army who held the highest proportion of high ranking officers in the Soviet military during the war.

Quotes

 * What do you want to have me shot for, Semyon Mikhailovich? If you don't find me suitable as chief of the operations department, then give me a combat division. I am a commander; I can command a division. But what would be the advantage of having me shot?
 * To Semyon Mikhailovich. Quoted in "Memoirs of Nikita Khrushchev" - Page 322 - by Nikita Sergeevich Khrushchev - Heads of state - 2007


 * What's bad about my biography? My father was a worker, my brothers, too, and I have always honestly served my country.
 * Quoted in "The 900 Days: The Siege Of Leningrad" - Page 112 - by Harrison E. Salisbury - History - 2003


 * There is no point in hiding that before the war we mostly learned to attack, and did not pay enough attention to such an important manoeuvre as retreat. Now we have paid for this. It turned out that the commanders and the staff were not sufficiently prepared to prepare and execute the retreat manoeuvre. Now, in the second week of war, we had in fact to learn from the beginning the most difficult art - the art of the execution of retreat.
 * Quoted in "The System of the International Organizations of the Communist Countries" - Page 36 - by Richard Szawlowski - 1976


 * Whatever we saw in October 1941, cannot be compared to anything that we had seen prior, when our forces retreated from the Dniepr borders. Now, things like this no longer happen. Now, we can frown by ourselves.
 * Quoted in "I. C. Bagramyan: A Photo Album About A Soviet Marshal" - Yerevan - 1987


 * We have won on the Arlov, Kursk, Belgorod, and Kharkov grounds. We won because the country was being defended not only by the army but by the entire Soviet people. The Socialist economy, Soviet political structure, and Marxist-Leninist ideology proved their unarguable excellence against the Fascist economy, Fascist political structure, and Fascist ideology of Germany.
 * Quoted in "I. C. Bagramyan: A Photo Album About A Soviet Marshal" - Yerevan - 1987




 * While thinking when sober, our success at reaching our goals by using the First Baltic Front troops, the Memel operation, it can't be disregarded, that they [the troops] not only honorably accomplished their powerful strategic operation, but also an infusion of victory for the Soviet armed forces and an entrance into the final stages of the war.
 * Quoted in "I. C. Bagramyan: A Photo Album About A Soviet Marshal" - Yerevan - 1987


 * Eastern Prussia was a battlefield during World War I years. And right from here, on September 1, 1939, began the spark of fire for the coming of the second world war. And in 1941, Eastern Prussia invaded Soviet soil with a powerful military onslaught, unleashing a grip of heavy burden, tragedy, and torture into the Soviet pre-Baltic and also the inhabitants of Leningrad, Pskov, and the Novgorod regions. Right from the very first days of the second world war, Eastern Prussia was completely transformed into a diabolic system of concentration camp strongholds for captured military people, and became a cruel prison for the young and females, who were brought from many European countries. In the first place, from the Soviet Union. And, aha! Now, after the winter of 1945, Soviet forces captured the descendants of these royal hounds in their very own doghouse!
 * The Germans are being referred to as dogs in the end of this famous quote. Quoted in "I. C. Bagramyan: A Photo Album About A Soviet Marshal" - Yerevan - 1987