Grigory Yashkin


Grigory Petrovich Yashkin was a Soviet Army colonel general and former commander of the 14th Guards Army.

Early life and career

He was born in December 1922 in Goldovka, a village in the Tambov Governorate of the Soviet Union. He is the son of Pyotr Efremovich Yashkin and Irina Andreevna. In his youth, he attended a drama school in Saransk. He joined the Red Army in 1939 at the age of 17. In 1941, he graduated from the Podolsk rifle and machine gun school and was immediately sent to the Western Front to serve in a machine gun platoon. After the war, he commanded a mechanized regiment and a separate tank brigade. In 1956, he graduated from Frunze Military Academy. In the mid-1960s, he served as deputy commander of the 31st Tank Division. In October 1969, he was the commander of the 44th Rifle Corps of the Transbaikal Military District, during which he presided over the stationing of troops in the Mongolian People's Republic as a result of the Sino-Soviet split and Sino-Soviet border conflict.
In 1972, he completed higher level courses at the Voroshilov Academy of the General Staff of the USSR. He returned to Mongolia in May 1970 to serve in the 39th Army of the Far Eastern Military District before returning to the USSR a year later to serve as commander of the 14th Guards Army in Odessa Military District, serving from 30 November 1971 to 4 December 1975. In this position, he effectivlt had jurisdiction over all units in the Moldovan SSR. After being relieved from his post, he held various administrative positions in the district as well as the Group of Soviet Forces in Germany.
From 1980-1984, he advised the Syrian Army as part of the Group of Soviet Military Specialists in Syria during for the course of the 1982 Lebanon War. During his time in Syria, he survived 2 attempts on his life, including an explosion at his headquarters in Damascus in October 1981. During his term as Deputy Head of Civil Defense of the USSR from 1984-1987, he oversaw the recovery process in the aftermath of the Chernobyl disaster in the Ukrainian and Byelorussian SSRs.
After retirement, he actively participated in public activities and has since served as the Chairman of the Russian Union of Veterans of the Armed Forces and the First Deputy Chairman of the Russian Committee of War and Military Veterans. He was also a member of the Presidium of the Coordination Council of the All-Russian public movement “People’s Patriotic Union of Russia”. He died in October 2003 at the age of 80 and was buried at Troekurovskoye Cemetery in Moscow. He is survived by his wife and daughters Svetlana and Elena.

Awards and honors