Sergei Akhromeyev

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Sergei Feodorovich Akhromeev (Ахромеев, Сергей Фёдорович in Russian) (1923 – 1991), Russian military figure, Hero of the Soviet Union (1982), Marshal of the Soviet Union (1983).

Akhromeev was a junior officer in World War II, serving with distinction on the Leningrad front.

In 1984-1988, Akhromeev was Chief of the General Staff of the Soviet Armed Forces. In that capacity he was heavily involved in the talks which brought an end to the Cold War. However, he grew increasingly dissatisfied with Mikhail Gorbachev's approach to the reforms of the military, and resigned that position.

The cause of his resignation was Gorbachev's insistence on dismantling the newest and most accurate ballistic missile in the Soviet Army - the SS-23 Spider under the tenets of the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty.

In March of 1990, he was made Adviser to the President of the USSR on military affairs.

During the August Coup of 1991, Akhromeev returned from a vacation in Sochi to offer his assistance to the coup leaders. Although he was never implicated in the coup, after its failure Akhromeev committed suicide in his Kremlin office, hanging himself with a length of curtain cord^{[citation needed]}. In addition to personal messages to his family, he left a note explaining that he could not continue living when the institutions to which he had devoted his life were disintegrating.

His suicide was widely seen as being out of character for him. As a result, there have been some speculations that the suicide notes were fabrications and he was in fact murdered, perhaps to prevent him from revealing evidence of others' complicity in the coup. Eduard Shevardnadze suggested that it was the result of an imbalance in his character, with an over-emphasis on duty at the expense of honor.

Shortly after his death, his grave was vandalized and his corpse stripped of the uniform in which it had been buried. The culprits were never found, and it is uncertain whether it was an act of pure desecration or if the grave-robbers hoped to sell the stolen uniform or its adornments for profit.