31.3. 1967 General Rodion Yakovlevich Malinovsky died

Soldiers under his command liberated Brno and other parts of South Moravia at the end of the Second World War. General Rodion Yakovlevich Malinovsky wanted to join the army as a young boy. He even became Minister of Defence. He held this post until his death on 31 March 1967.

He went to a church community school, grew up in a poor artisan's family. Before the First World War, he worked as a dockworker. He badly wanted to join the army, but because he was still very young, he was not taken to the front. Malinkovsky, however, secretly got into a military transport and got himself enrolled as a volunteer.

At the age of seventeen, he was awarded the Cross of St. George, or the Cross of St. George, for his bravery. He was also promoted to Lance Corporal, but was soon severely wounded. "After he was cured, he enlisted in the Russian Expeditionary Corps, with which he went to the Western Front in France in 1916. In January 1918, he even joined the elite 1st Moroccan Division of the Foreign Legion, and at the end of the war he could boast three French War Crosses," says the Internet Encyclopedia of the History of the City of Brno.

Thanks to his experience abroad, he rose quickly through the hierarchy of the Red Army. "In December 1920, for example, he was appointed commander of a machine-gun detachment. In August, the division returned to Irkutsk, and the not-yet-twenty-four-year-old Malinovsky was appointed deputy commander of the 1st Battalion of the 104th Rifle Regiment there," says Jiri Fidler in his book Stalin's Marshals.

Malinovsky also graduated from the Frunze Military Academy in Moscow. Thanks to his language skills, he was sent to Spain in late 1936, successfully avoiding a period of purges in the officer corps.

At the beginning of the German invasion of the Soviet Union in 1941, Malinovsky held the post of commander of the 48th Army in the Red Army. Subsequently, as commander of the 2nd Guards Army, he played an important role in the Battle of Stalingrad in December 1942. In the spring of the following year, already at the rank of general, he commanded the South-Western Front.

"Under his command, the troops fought their way into Romania and then into Hungary, where, after heavy fighting, they entered Budapest on 13 February 1945. As part of the Bratislava-Brno operation, launched on 25 March 1945, Malinovsky's troops penetrated into southern Moravia and crowned their campaign on 26 March 1945. April 1945 with the liberation of Brno," the Internet Encyclopaedia of the History of the City of Brno states.

From 1945 to 1955, Malinovsky held important command positions in Manchuria and then in the Far East. In 1957 he was appointed Minister of Defence. He died on 31 March 1967 in Moscow.

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