Dmitry Ustinov

Dmitriy Fyodorovich Ustinov (Дми́трий Фёдорович Усти́нов; 30 October 1908 – 20 December 1984) was a Soviet politician and a Marshal of the Soviet Union during the Cold War.

Ustinov was born in the city of Samara to a Russian working-class family in 1908.

Shortly after that, in 1922, his father died.

In 1923, he and his mother, Yevrosinya Martinovna, moved to the city of Makarev (near Ivanovo-Voznesensk) where he worked as a fitter in a paper mill.

Shortly after that, in 1925, his mother died.

Upon reaching adulthood, he joined the Communist Party in 1927 before pursuing a career in engineering.

Ustinov joined the Communist Party in 1927.

In 1929, he started training at the Faculty of Mechanics in the Ivanovo-Voznesensk Polytechnic Institute.

Afterward, Ustinov was transferred to the Moscow Bauman Higher Technical School.

Then, in March 1932, he entered the Institute of Military Mechanical Engineering in Leningrad from where he graduated in 1934.

Afterward, he worked as a construction engineer at the Leningrad artillery Marine Research Institute.

After graduating from the Institute of Military Mechanical Engineering in 1934, he became a construction engineer at the Leningrad Artillery Marine Research Institute.

By 1937, he transferred to the Bolshevik "Arms" Factory where he ultimately rose to become the director.

While serving as People's Commissar of Armaments during World War II, he achieved distinction within the party's ranks by successfully overseeing the evacuation of Leningrad's industries to the Ural Mountains, a feat for which he was awarded the title of Hero of Socialist Labour.

At the war's end, he was entrusted with seizing raw materials, scientists and research left over from Germany's missile programme.

In 1937, he was transferred to the "Bolshevik" Arms Factory as an engineer.

He later became the director of the Factory.

At the time of the German invasion of the Soviet Union, in June 1941, Joseph Stalin appointed the 32-year-old Ustinov to the post of People's Commissar of Armaments.

From this position, he supervised the massive evacuation of the defence industry from the besieged city of Leningrad to east of the Ural Mountains.

Over 80 military industries were evacuated that together employed over six hundred thousand workers, technicians, and engineers.

Stalin later rewarded Ustinov, whom he called "the Red-head", with the Soviet Union's highest civilian honour, Hero of Socialist Labour.

After the war was over, Ustinov played a crucial role in requisitioning the German missile programme, developed during World War II, as an impetus to the Soviet missile and space programmes.

In 1952, Ustinov became a member of the Central Committee.

In March 1953, after Stalin died, the Ministry of Armaments was combined with the Ministry of Aviation Industry to become the Ministry of Defense Industry, with Ustinov assigned as head of this new ministry.

In 1957, he was appointed as a Deputy Premier of the Soviet Union and became chairman of the Military-Industrial Commission.

Leonid Brezhnev took power after the ousting of Khrushchev, and Ustinov returned to the defence industry.

He served as a Central Committee secretary in charge of the Soviet military–industrial complex from 1965 to 1976 and as Minister of Defence of the Soviet Union from 1976 until his death in 1984.

Under Leonid Brezhnev's leadership, Ustinov joined the Central Committee Secretariat and rose to become a candidate member of the Politburo by 1965.

Following his rise to the central party apparatus, he was given the task of administering the Soviet Union's defense industry and its armed forces.

In 1965, Brezhnev made Ustinov a candidate member of the Politburo and secretary of the Central Committee with oversight of the military, the defense industry, and certain security organs.

He was also placed in charge of developing the Soviet Union's strategic bomber force and intercontinental ballistic missile system.

Ustinov was known in the defense industry as Uncle Mitya.

He was also missile engineer Vladimir Chelomey's stolid personal adversary.

He issued a directive, in February 1970, that ordered Chelomey's OKB-52 design bureau to combine its Almaz space station with Sergei Korolyov's OKB-1 design bureau, then headed by Vasili Mishin.

This order was designed as an impetus towards the development of the Salyut space station.

Ustinov gained power in the bureaucracy as he rose in the defence industry.

By 1976, he succeeded Andrei Grechko as Minister of Defense and received the rank of Marshal of the Soviet Union.

Thereafter, Ustinov's hardline attitudes towards the West and unreserved backing for the Soviet arms buildup would dominate his country's national security policy up until his death in 1984.

Dmitry Feodorovich Ustinov was born in a working-class family in Samara.

During the Civil War, when hunger became intolerable, his sick father went to Samarkand, leaving Dmitry as head of the family.