Leonid Govorov



Leonid Aleksandrovich Govorov (February 22, 1897 – March 19, 1955), Soviet military commander, was appointed as instructor in tactics at the Dzerzhinskiy Artillery Academy in 1938. At one point he was dismissed from his position and threatened with arrest, but the intervention of Marshal Kliment Voroshilov and Soviet head of state Mikhail Kalinin saved him. When Nazi Germany invaded the Soviet Union in June 1941, Govorov was appointed Director of Artillery on the Western Front, in eastern Poland and Belarus. In June 1944, during the liberation of the Northern Leningrad region and subsequent invasion of Finland he was promoted to the rank of Marshal of the Soviet Union. Leonid Govorov was awarded the title of the Hero of the Soviet Union on January 27 of 1945. He died from chronic heart disease in March 1955.

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 * We are going for the enemy's fortifications. Artillery is doing its share in every phase of the battle. Automatic weapons are so extensively used to-day that we cannot possibly limit our operation to silencing enemy gun emplacements. Drive them underground? No, we have to wipe them out! The artillerymen can no longer be guided merely by orders for the infantry. It is waging battle in its own right.
 * Quoted in "The Dynamics of Nationalism: Readings in Its Meaning and Development" - by Louis Leo Snyder - Political Science - 1964 - Page 219


 * The leading force in the struggle for peace and for strengthening cooperation among the peoples is the Soviet Union.
 * Quoted in "USSR Information Bulletin" - 1942 - Page 358


 * The Germans had thought they could replace light artillery with mortars, believing it unnecessary to furnish their troops with light guns and howitzers. The theory was wrong as they found out during the invasion.
 * Quoted in "The Russian Army: Its Men, Its Leaders and Its Battles" - Page 82 - by Walter Kerr - History - 2005