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close to 1,800 tactical airplanes and 3,000 tanks,
including the German Mark VI Tiger, considered
the world's most powerful tank. The German
attack was repeatedly postponed owing to
equipment delays and top-level disagreements,
so that by the time it actually began on July 4,
the Germans had lost the crucial element of sur-
prise. A Soviet counterattack on July 11 neutral-
ized the initial German attack on the northern
side. A second German attack on July 10, on the
southern side of the salient, was more successful
and led to the tank battle at the village of
Prokhorovka. Close to 1,500 tanks were engaged
while a furious air battle raged overhead. As
both sides brought up reinforcements, the battle
escalated until the Germans, concerned about
the impact of the Allied landing in Sicily, sus-
pended their maneuvers and began a with-
drawal on July 17. Soviet forces then opened
their offensive while Soviet partisans attacked
the German rear. When the battle ended in mid-
August 1943, the estimated losses on the Ger-
man side were 70,000 troops killed and captured
and 2,950 tanks and 1,400 aircraft destroyed—
irreplaceable losses so soon after the disaster at
STALINGRAD
. Soviet losses were also heavy, but
the men and weapons could be quickly replaced.
The Kursk battle marked the end of German
offensives on the eastern front and was followed
immediately by the first Soviet summer offen-
sive of the war.
Kutuzov was brought back to face Napoleon and
the invading French army at the Battle of Aus-
terlitz (1805), but he was forced to defer to
ALEXANDER I
's leadership. Another round of gov-
ernment appointments followed: governor of
Kiev (1806-7), of Moldavia (1808), of Lithuania
(1809-11). Kutuzov was again in Moldavia as
commander of the Russian army in the
RUSSO
-
TURKISH WAR OF
1811
, and he negotiated the
Peace of Bucharest. Kutuzov succeeded
BARCLAY
DE TOLLY
a few weeks before the Battle of
BORODINO
, and despite temporarily surrendering
Moscow to the French in September 1812, sub-
sequently he drove Napoleon's armies out of
Russia by December 1812. He was widely popu-
lar among his people but disliked by Alexander I.
An officer who was highly rated by
SUVOROV
,
Kutuzov was able to play his bulky form and
folksy manner to advantage against his oppo-
nents, who tended to underestimate him. His
legend as the wise old man who had defeated
Napoleon was greatly enhanced by the sympa-
thetic portrait of him written by Tolstoy in
War
and Peace
(1868-69).
Kuznetsov, Anatolii Vasilievich
(1929-1979)
writer
One of the brightest lights among a stellar group
of young Soviet writers in the early 1960s,
Kuznetsov was born in Kiev and lived through
the German occupation of the Ukraine during
World War II. At the age of 15, he received a
national prize for a short story submitted to
Pionerskaia Pravda
in 1946. He worked as a con-
struction worker on some of the grand hydro-
electric stations of the 1950s—Kakhovka (1952)
and Irkutsk (1956). His convincing description of
young workers in the novel
Prodolzhenie legendy
(1956) won him national and international
acclaim. He was accepted into the elite Gorky
Literary Institute in Moscow, graduating in
1960. His career changed substantially with the
events surrounding his sensational work,
Babi
Yar,
a novel that told about the Nazi German
mass murder of Jews in the
BABI YAR
ravines of
Kutuzov, Mikhail Ilarionovich
(1745-1813)
field marshal
Kutuzov began his military career as a lecturer
in mathematics at the Artillery School in 1759,
at the age of only 14. First posted in Poland in
1764-65, he fought in the Turkish wars of
1768-74 and 1787-91. After a mission to Con-
stantinople (1792-94), Kutuzov was appointed
director of the Cadet Corps in 1794. Several gov-
ernment appointments followed in the next
decade: in Finland (1795-99), as governor of
Lithuania (1799-1801), and governor of St.
Petersburg (1801-02), after which he retired.
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