page_title: Mikhail Kutuzov
section_title: Death and legacy
hierarchical_section_title: Mikhail Kutuzov / Death and legacy
caption_attribution_description: English: Koetoezov monument on the square in front of the Kazan cathedral in Saint Petersburg.
context_page_description: Prince Mikhail Illarionovich Golenishchev-Kutuzov was a Field Marshal of the Russian Empire. He served as one of the finest military officers and diplomats of Russia under the reign of three Romanov Tsars: Catherine II, Paul I and Alexander I. His military career was closely associated with the rising period of Russia from the end of the 18th century to the beginning of the 19th century. Kutuzov is considered to have been one of the best Russian generals.
  He was born in Saint Petersburg in 1745 to a family of Novgorod nobility. His father was a Russian general and senator. Kutuzov began military schooling at age 12 and joined the Imperial Russian Army in 1759. Three years later Kutuzov became a company commander in the Astrakhan Infantry Regiment under Alexander Suvorov. He took part in crushing the Polish Bar Confederation rebellion. During the Russo-Turkish War of 1768–1774 he served in the staff of Pyotr Rumyantsev at Moldova for the battles of Larga and Kagul. In July 1774 at Crimea, Kutuzov was severely wounded by a bullet that went through his temple and out near his right eye, which became permanently scarred.
context_section_description: Early in 1813, Kutuzov fell ill, and he died on 28 April 1813 at Bunzlau, Silesia, then in the Kingdom of Prussia, now Bolesławiec, Poland. Memorials have been erected to him there, at the Poklonnaya Hill in Moscow and in front of the Kazan Cathedral, Saint Petersburg, where he is buried, by Boris Orlovsky. He had five daughters; his only son died of smallpox as an infant. As he had no male heir, his estates passed to the Tolstoy family, as his eldest daughter, Praskovia, had married Count Matvei Fyodorovich Tolstoy.
  Today, Kutuzov is still held in high regard, alongside Barclay and his mentor Suvorov.
  Alexander Pushkin addressed the Field Marshal in the famous elegy on Kutuzov's sepulchre. The novelist Leo Tolstoy clearly idolised Kutuzov. In his influential 1869 novel War and Peace, the elderly, sick Kutuzov plays a major role in the war sections. He is portrayed as a gentle spiritual man, far removed from the cold arrogance of Napoleon, but with a much clearer vision of the true nature of warfare.  Tolstoy wrote of Kutuzov's insight and the national sentiment, "... this sentiment elevated Kutuzof to the high pinnacle of humanity from which he, the general-in-chief, employed all his efforts, not to kill and exterminate men, but to save and have pity on them." 
  During the Great Patriotic War (1941–1945), the Soviet government established the Order of Kutuzov which, among several other decorations, was preserved in Russia upon the dissolution of the Soviet Union, thus remaining among the highest military awards in Russia, only second to the Order of Zhukov.
  Also, during World War II, one of the key strategic operations of the Red Army, the Orel Strategic Offensive Operation "Kutuzov" was named after the Field Marshal (Russian: Орловская  Стратегическая Наступательная Операция Кутузов) (12 July – 18 August 1943).
  No less than ten Russian towns have been named "Kutuzovo" in honour of the general. Notable among them is the former German town of Schirwindt (now Kutuzovo in the Krasnoznamensky District of the Kaliningrad Oblast) - the first town in Germany proper that was reached by Soviet infantry.
  A Sverdlov-class cruiser named for Kutuzov was commissioned in the Soviet Navy in 1954. It is now preserved as a museum ship in Novorossiysk.
  The monument to Kutuzov in the city of Brody in Western Ukraine was demolished in February 2014 as part of the Euromaidan demonstrations.
caption: Monument to Kutuzov in Saint Petersburg (1837)
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