Who was the Soviet military spokeperson during the 1983 attack on a passenger airline?
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Nikolai Ogarkov Nikolai Vasilyevich Ogarkov (Russian: Николай Васильевич Огарков ; 30 October 1917 in the village of Molokovo, Tver Governorate – 23 January 1994) was a prominent Soviet military personality. He was promoted to Marshal of the Soviet Union in 1977. Between 1977 and 1984, he was Chief of the General Staff of the USSR. He became widely known in the West when he became the Soviet military's spokesman following the shootdown of Korean Air Lines Flight 007 near Moneron Island in September 1983. He was dismissed as Chief of the General Staff on 6 September 1984.
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Korean Air Lines Flight 007 Korean Air Lines Flight 007 (also known as KAL007 and KE007) was a scheduled Korean Air Lines flight from New York City to Seoul via Anchorage, Alaska. On September 1, 1983, the South Korean airliner serving the flight was shot down by a Soviet Su-15 interceptor. The Boeing 747 airliner was en route from Anchorage to Seoul, but deviated from its original planned route and flew through Soviet prohibited airspace around the time of a U.S. aerial reconnaissance mission. The Soviet Air Force treated the unidentified aircraft as an intruding U.S. spy plane, and proceeded to destroy it with air-to-air missiles, after firing warning shots which were likely not seen by the KAL pilots. The Korean airliner eventually crashed in the sea near Moneron Island west of Sakhalin in the Sea of Japan. All 269 passengers and crew aboard were killed, including Larry McDonald, a Representative from Georgia in the United States House of Representatives. The Soviets found the wreckage under the sea on September 15, and found the flight recorders in October, but this information was kept secret until 1993.
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Semyon Budyonny Semyon Mikhailovich Budyonny Also "Budennyj", "Budyonnyy", "Budennii", "Budyoni", "Budyenny", or "Budenny"; (April 25 1883-October 26, 1973) was a Russian cavalryman, a military commander during the Russian Civil War and World War II, and a close political ally of Soviet leader Joseph Stalin.
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Aleksey Frolovich Solomatin Aleksey Frolovich Solomatin (Russian: Алексе́й Фро́лович Солома́тин ) (1921-1943) was an aviation commander of the Soviet Army, ace during the Great Patriotic War, and Hero of the Soviet Union.
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Vladimir Danchev Vladimir Danchev was a newscaster at Soviet radio in Moscow, who is famous for calling on the Afghan people to resist the Soviet invasion of their country on 23 May 1983. His controversial encouragement of armed resistance against the Russian military outraged many of his countrymen. However, according to the American political analyst Noam Chomsky and other commentators, his principal transgression was that he embarrassed the Soviet government by contradicting their official ideology, by describing the presence of Soviet forces in Afghanistan as an “invasion.” According to the party line, Russia was not invading Afghanistan; it was defending the Afghan people against terrorists who were funded by foreign sources (the USSR was referring to the Mujahedin and the CIA). Danchev was subsequently sent to a psychiatric hospital and returned to work in December 1983. He was praised in the U.S. media as a hero of free speech and free thought. Danchev was of Russian and Bulgarian descent and grew up in Tashkent, Uzbek SSR.
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Konstantin Rokossovsky Konstantin Konstantinovich (Xaverevich) Rokossovsky (December 21 1896 – August 3, 1968) was a Soviet officer of Polish origin who became Marshal of the Soviet Union, Marshal of Poland and served as Poland's Defence Minister. He was among the most prominent Red Army commanders of World War II, especially renowned for his planning and executing of Operation Bagration, one of the most decisive Red Army successes of the Second World War.
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Mikhail Tukhachevsky Mikhail Nikolayevich Tukhachevsky (Russian: Михаи́л Никола́евич Тухаче́вский ; February 16 [O.S. February 4] 1893  – June 12, 1937) was a leading Soviet military leader and theoretician from 1918 to 1937. He commanded the Soviet Western Front in the Soviet-Polish War of 1920–1921 and served as chief of staff of the Red Army from 1925 through 1928, as assistant in the People's Commissariat of Defense after 1934 and as commander of the Volga Military District in 1937. He contributed to the modernization of Soviet armament and army force structure in the 1920s and 1930s and became instrumental in the development of aviation, mechanized, and airborne forces. As a theoretician, he was a driving force behind Soviet development of the theory of deep operations. The Soviet authorities accused him of treason and had him shot during the military purges of 1937–1938, but rehabilitated his reputation in the 1960s.
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Vladimir Arkhipov Vladimir Mikhailovich Arkhipov (Russian: Владимир Миха́йлович Архи́пов; 1 June 1933 – 27 October 2004) was a Soviet army general and politician.
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Solomon Milshtein Solomon Rafailovich Milshtein (Russian: Соломон Рафаилович Мильштейн ; 1899 – 14 January 1955) was a Soviet state security official.
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Oleg Penkovsky Oleg Vladimirovich Penkovsky (Russian: Олег Владимирович Пеньковский ; 23 April 1919 – 16 May 1963), codenamed HERO, was a colonel with Soviet military intelligence (GRU) during the late 1950s and early 1960s who informed the United Kingdom and the United States about the Soviet emplacement of missiles in Cuba.
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Sergei Rudenko (general) Serhi Gnatovich Rudenko (Ukrainian: "Сергій Гнатович Руденко", Russified: "Сергей Игнатьевич Руденко" [Sergei Ignatevich Rudenko]; October 20 [O.S. October 7] 1904 , Korop, Russian Empire - 10 July 1990, Moscow, Soviet Union) was a Soviet Marshal of the aviation.
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Leonid Maltsev Colonel General Leonid Semenovich Maltsev (Belarusian: Леанід Сямёнавіч Мальцаў; born August 29, 1949) was the Minister of Defence of Belarus from 1995–96 and 2001-09.
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Nikolai Ivanovich Kuznetsov Nikolai Ivanovich Kuznetsov (Russian: Николай Иванович Кузнецов ) (July 27, 1911–March 9, 1944) was a semi-legendary Soviet intelligence agent and partisan who operated in Nazi-occupied Ukraine (Reichskommissariat Ukraine) during World War II who personally killed six high-ranking German officials. His file is still not fully disclosed and will be held until 2025 in the FSB archives. It was not until 1990 that Kuznetsov was officially recognized as a NKVD agent. He used several pseudonyms during his intelligence operations: e.g. Rudolf Schmidt, Nikolai Vasilevitsh Grachev (Николай Васильевич Грачёв) and Oberleutnant Paul Siebert. Kuznetsov was posthumously awarded the title Hero of the Soviet Union.
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Yevdokia Bershanskaya Yevdokia Davidovna Bershanskaya (Russian: "Евдоки́я Давы́довна Берша́нская"; Dobrovolnoye, Stavropol, February 6, 1913 – September 16, 1982 in Moscow) was a Soviet pilot in World War II and second in command of the 46th Taman Guards Night Bomber Aviation Regiment.
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Viktor Sukhodrev Viktor Mikhaylovich Sukhodrev (Russian: Виктор Михайлович Суходрев ; 12 December 1932 – 16 May 2014) was a Russian-English interpreter for highest level Soviet politicians including Nikita Khrushchev, Leonid Brezhnev, Mikhail Gorbachev and Alexey Kosygin.
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Dymshits–Kuznetsov hijacking affair The Dymshits–Kuznetsov aircraft hijacking affair, also known as The First Leningrad Trial or Operation Wedding (Russian: Ленинградское самолётное дело , or Дело группы Дымшица-Кузнецова) (Leningrad Process), was an attempt to steal a civilian aircraft on 15 June 1970 by a group of 16 Soviet refuseniks in order to escape to the West. Even though the attempt was unsuccessful, it was a notable event in the course of the Cold War because it drew international attention to human rights violations in the USSR and resulted in the temporary loosening of emigration restrictions.
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Death and state funeral of Leonid Brezhnev On 10 November 1982, Leonid Ilyich Brezhnev, the third General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU) and the fifth leader of the Soviet Union, died aged 75 after suffering a heart attack following years of serious ailments. His death was officially acknowledged on 11 November simultaneously by Soviet radio and television. After five days of national mourning, Brezhnev was given a state funeral and then buried in the Kremlin Wall Necropolis. Yuri Andropov, Brezhnev's eventual successor as general secretary, was chairman of the committee in charge of managing Brezhnev's funeral, held on 15 November 1982, five days after his death.
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Khrushchev: The Man and His Era Khrushchev: The Man and His Era is a 2003 biography of Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev. Written by William Taubman, the book is the first in-depth and comprehensive American biography of Khrushchev. Taubman was the recipient of the 2004 Pulitzer Prize for Biography or Autobiography, as well as the 2004 National Book Critics Circle Award. The author spent almost 20 years researching the life of Khrushchev in preparation to write the book. Extensive research was made possible through access to archives in Russia and the Ukraine, which were opened to the public following the collapse of the Soviet Union. In addition to printed materials and documentation, he spent time engaging Khrushchev's children and extended relatives, resulting in over 70 personal interviews. Taubman presents a historical narrative and study of the life of Nikita Khrushchev, the Soviet leader who succeeded Joseph Stalin. The book concludes with Khrushchev's death on September 11, 1971.
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Yegor Yakovlev Yegor Vladimirovich Yakovlev (Яковлев, Егор Владимирович ; 14 March 1930 – 18 September 2005) was one of the founders of Mikhail Gorbachev and Boris Yeltsin's policy of "glasnost", and one of the most respected Russian journalists.
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Nikolay Mikhaylovich Kharlamov Nikolay Mikhaylovich Kharlamov (Russian: Никола́й Миха́йлович Харла́мов ; 6 (19) December 1905 – 9 April 1983) was a Soviet military leader and admiral.
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Vasily Reshetnikov Vasily Vasiliyevich Reshetnikov (Russian: Василий Васильевич Решетников ) (born December 23, 1919) was a Soviet pilot during World War II. Reshetnikov flew 307 missions mainly as a pilot for a long-range bomber and in the summer of 1943, received the title of Hero of the Soviet Union. After World War II concluded he was named commander of Air Division, Air Corps. Reshetnikov was subsequently promoted to Colonel General and took command of Long-range Air Forces from 1969 to 1980 and was made Deputy Commander-in-Chief of the Air Force of the Soviet Union from 1980 to 1986.
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2006 Soviet war documents declassification In 2006 the Russian Ministry of Defence declassified about a hundred of pages of archived documents concerning Soviet preparedness for the German invasion on the Eastern Front of World War II. On 22 June 2017 the Ministry published them online on a subdomain of its official website, stating that they were never published before. The documents from the early 1950s were authored by Soviet military commanders of various ranks at the request of a fact-finding panel. The online publication was made on the 76th anniversary of Operation Barbarossa.