Academy, Deputy Chief of the General Staff, Chief Inspector of the Army, Commanding General of the Leningrad Military District and, from November 1957, Commander in Chief of the Group of Soviet Forces in Germany. On May 8, 1959, Zakharov was made a Marshal of the Soviet Union. In January 1960, the Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev announced that within two years, 1,200,000 men, including 250,000 officers, were to be demobilised from the armed forces. When this decision was ratified by the Supreme Soviet on 14 January, the only officers to say anything were Malinovsky and Zakharov, who supported it. It is likely that officers more senior than Zakharov who did not speak, such as Marshal Sokolovsky kept quiet because they opposed the decision. In April 1960, Zakharov was appointed Chief of the General Staff and Deputy Minister of Defence, replacing Marshal Sokolovsky. In 1963, having apparently fallen out with Khrushchev, he was demoted to the job he had held 18 years earlier, as head of the General Staff Academy. Khrushchev later stated that Zakharov was removed because he used to fall asleep during important meetings. He was reinstated in October 1964, he was reinstated as Chief of the General Staff and USSR First Minister for Defence, after his successor Marshal Biryuzov had been killed in an airplane crash, and Khrushchev had been ousted. When he retired through ill health in September 1971, he was the last active Marshal to have taken part in the events of 1917. Marshal M. V. Zakharov died on January 31, 1972. The urn containing his ashes is buried by the Kremlin Wall Necropolis. His memoirs, which appear to have been written after 1964, were not published until 1989. Honours and awards Hero of the Soviet Union (8 September 1945, 22 September 1971) Five Orders of Lenin (21 February 1945, 8 September 1945, 21 June 1957, 2 February 1958, 22 February 1968) Order of the October Revolution (16 August 1968) Order of the Red Banner, four times (22 February 1938, 31 December 1942, 3 November 1944, 6 November 1947) Order of Suvorov, 1st class, twice (13 September 1944, 28 April 1945) Order of Kutuzov, 1st class, twice (27 August 1943, 22 February 1944) Order of Bogdan Khmelnitsky, 1st class (17 May 1944) Order of the Red Star (31 December 1939) Honorary weapon with gold National Emblem of the Soviet Union (22 February 1968) Jubilee Medal "XX Years