General of the Army (Soviet Union)

General of the army (Russian: генерал армии, general armii) was a rank of the Soviet Union which was first established in June 1940 as a high rank for Red Army generals, inferior only to the marshal of the Soviet Union. In the following 51 years the Soviet Union created 133 generals of the army, 32 of whom were later promoted to the rank of marshal of the Soviet Union. It is a direct counterpart of the Russian Federation's "general of the army" rank.

The rank was usually given to senior officers of the Ministry of Defence and General Staff, and also to meritorious military district commanders. From the 1970s, it was also frequently given to the heads of the KGB and the Ministry of the Interior.

Soviet generals of the army include Ivan Chernyakhovsky (the youngest Soviet World War II front commander, killed in East Prussia), Aleksei Antonov (head of the General Staff in the closing stages of World War II, awarded the Order of Victory), Issa Pliyev (an Ossetian-born World War II commander who played a major role in the Cuban Missile Crisis) and Yuri Andropov (who held the rank as head of the KGB).

The Soviet rank of general of the army is comparable to NATO OF-9 level and equivalent to the UK and US ranks of general; Soviet and current Russian rank systems also have a marshal rank.

The corresponding naval rank is admiral of the fleet, which has been used in both the Soviet and Russian navies, although conferred much more rarely.

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