Dmitry Ustinov
Soviet military commander and politician (1908-1984)
Dmitry Fyodorovich Ustinov (Russian: Дмитрий Фёдорович Устинов; 30 October 1908 – 20 December 1984) was a Soviet politician and a Marshal of the Soviet Union during the Cold War. 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.
Ustinov was born in the city of Samara to a Russian working-class family in 1908. Upon reaching adulthood, he joined the Communist Party in 1927 before pursuing a career in engineering. 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.
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.
Begin with the source’s own compact description: “Dmitry Ustinov” is soviet military commander and politician (1908-1984). The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Dmitry, Ustinov and Soviet, not as a finished interpretation.
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The entry’s evidential value lies in the named roles, institutions and publications that can be tested against primary documentation. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 8, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q48067. VIAF identifies the subject as 71400271. The Library of Congress control number is n82156909. 4 of 4 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 1 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1908, 1984, 1965 and 1976.
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This entry incorporates text from “Dmitry Ustinov” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.