Kliment Voroshilov

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Kliment Voroshilov : biography

4 February 1881 – 2 December 1969

In an embarrassing incident at the 1943 Tehran Conference, during a ceremony to receive the "Sword of Stalingrad" from Winston Churchill, he took the sword from Stalin but then allowed the sword to fall from its scabbard onto his toes in the presence of the Big Three wartime leaders.Winston Churchill, Closing the Ring, Vol. 5, p. 321.

In 1945–1947, he supervised the establishment of the communist regime in Hungary. In 1952, Voroshilov was appointed a member of the Presidium of the Central Committee. Stalin’s death on 5 March 1953 prompted major changes in the Soviet leadership and in March 1953, Voroshilov was approved as Chairman of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet (i.e., the head of state) with Nikita Khrushchev as First Secretary of the Communist Party and Georgy Malenkov as Premier of the Soviet Union. Voroshilov, Malenkov, and Khrushchev brought about 26 June 1953 arrest of Lavrenty Beria after Stalin’s death.

Honours and awards

Soviet

  • Hero of the Soviet Union (3 February 1956 (in conjunction with his 75th birthday), 22 February 1968 (in conjunction with the 50th anniversary of the Armed Forces of the USSR))
  • Hero of Socialist Labour (7 May 1960)
  • Eight Orders of Lenin (№880 – 23 February 1935, №3582 – 22 February 1938, №14851 – 3 February 1941, №26411 – 21 February 1945, №128065 – 3 February 1951, №313410 – 3 February 1956, №331807 – 3 February 1961, №340967 – 22 February 1968)
  • Order of the Red Banner, six times (№47 – 26 June 1919, №629/2 от апреля 1921 года, №27/3–2 December 1925, №5/4–22 February 1930, №1/5–3 November 1944, №1/6 от 24 June 1948)
  • Order of Suvorov, 1st class (№125 – 22 February 1944)
  • Order of the Red Banner of the Uzbek Soviet Socialist Republic (17 February 1930)
  • Order of the Red Banner of the Tajik SSR (№ 148 – 14 January 1933)
  • Order of the Red Banner ZSFSR (25 February 1933)
  • Jubilee Medal "XX Years of the Workers’ and Peasants’ Red Army" (22 February 1938)
  • Medal "For the Victory over Germany in the Great Patriotic War 1941–1945" (1945)
  • Medal "For the Defence of Leningrad"
  • Medal "For the Defence of Moscow"
  • Medal "For the Defence of the Caucasus"
  • Medal "In Commemoration of the 800th Anniversary of Moscow" (21 September 1947)
  • Jubilee Medal "30 Years of the Soviet Army and Navy" (22 February 1948)
  • Jubilee Medal "40 Years of the Armed Forces of the USSR" (17 February 1958)
  • Jubilee Medal "50 Years of the Armed Forces of the USSR"
  • Jubilee Medal "Twenty Years of Victory in the Great Patriotic War 1941-1945" (1965)
  • Honorary Revolutionary Weapon (1920, 1968)

Foreign awards

  • Hero of the Mongolian People’s Republic (29 May 1957)
  • Order of Sukhbaatar, twice (Mongolia)
  • Order of the Red Banner (Mongolia)
  • Grand Cross of the Order of the White Rose (Finland)
  • Honorary Citizen of Izmir (Turkey)