Sergei Shtemenko was born to a peasant family in the village of Uryupinsk. His original surname was Shtemenkov with the suffix "-ov" like other local people, but after the death of his father, his mother changed the surname to Ukrainian style: Shtemenko. Shtemenko volunteered for the Red Army at 1926. In 1930 he joined the Communist Party, and he graduated from the Anti-Aircraft School in Sevastopol at the same year. After several years in the Artillery, he moved to the Armored Corps, completing his studies in the Mechanization and Motorization Academy in 1937. He commanded a tank regiment until September 1938, when he was summoned to the General Staff Academy. In late August 1939, with other cadets, Shtemenko was assigned as a staff officer to the Soviet forces preparing for the Invasion of Poland, and took part in the operation. During the Soviet-Finnish War he served as an assistant in the General Staff. After matriculating from the Academy at autumn 1940, Shtemenko's request to be transferred to the new Tank Corps was rejected and he was posted as an aide to General Mikhail Sharokhin, a department chief in the Operations Directorate.
World War II
In August 1941, soon after the German invasion, Shtemenko was appointed as Sharokhin's deputy, an office he held until after the Battle of Moscow, when he was assigned as chief of the Near East department. As such, Shtemenko monitored the conditions of the Soviet troops stationed in the recently occupied Iran. In June 1942, he replaced Sharokhin as the department chief. Shtemenko took part in the operational planning of the Battles for Crimea, the Caucasus and Stalingrad. In May 1943, he was promoted to be the chief of the Operations Directorate, serving directly under Marshal Alexander Vasilevsky. In November of that year he escorted Stalin to the Tehran Conference. During February and March 1944, Shtemenko served as the Stavka representative in the 2nd Baltic Front during the campaign to relieve the Siege of Leningrad. During the Spring of 1944, he toured between the different fronts fighting in Belarus and coordinated their operations. After the German surrender, Shtemenko was among the organizers of the Victory Parade. In August 1945, he took part in the planning of the Soviet–Japanese War.
Post-war career
In April 1946 Shtemenko was promoted to the position of Deputy Chief of the General Staff. In November 1948, the 41-year-old Shtemenko was made a Chief of the General Staff and the Deputy Minister of Defence. However, in June 1952 he was replaced as Chief of the General Staff by Vasily Sokolovsky. Shtemenko was then transferred to command the Group of Soviet Forces in Germany. In 1953 Shtemenko was listed as an intended victim of the Doctors' Plot. He continued to serve in the General Staff as deputy chief, and was made a candidate member of the Central Committee, an office he held until 1956. In June 1953 he was dismissed from the General Staff and demoted to Lieutenant General, after being accused of being an associate of Beria. In 1956 Zhukov appointed him Chief of the Military Intelligence and promoted him to Colonel General. However, Shtemenko again fell out of grace after Zhukov was removed as Defense Minister, and was demoted again to Lieutenant General in 1957. He was sent to occupy the position of deputy commander of the Volga Military District. Shtemenko slowly regained his status. In June 1962 he was appointed Chief of Staff of the Ground Forces, and in April 1964 he became Chief of the Main Organizational-Mobilization Department of the General Staff. In August 1968 he was promoted to be the Chief of Combined Staff of the Warsaw Pact under the Pact's forces Supreme Commander Marshal Ivan Yakubovsky, and granted the rank of Army General once more. Shtemenko died in Moscow in 1976. On 10 February 1977, on the 70th anniversary of his birth and 10 months after his death, the Krasnodar Red Banner Military Academy was renamed after him.
