Background
Koldunov, Aleksandr was born in 1923.
Koldunov, Aleksandr was born in 1923.
Served at the front, 1943-1945. Joined the Communist Party in 1944. Commander of a fighter aviation regiment, then of a fighter aviation division.
Deputy Commander, later Commander of Aviation of Baku Air Defence District, 1st Deputy Commander of Baku Air Defence District, 1952-1970. Commander of Moscow Air Defence District, 1970-1975. Candidate member of the Central Committee, 1971-1976.
Full member, 1981. 1st Deputy Commander-in-chief of the USSR Air Defence Forces, 1975-1978. Commander-in-chief, 1978. Deputy USSR Minister of Defence, 1978.
Head of USSR Air Defences. Fired in June 1987 as a result of the affair of Mathias Rust, a 19-year-old West German pilot who landed his light plane, a Cessna, near the Kremlin in broad daylight. When woken by an aide and told of the event Koldunov replied, ‘Next you will be telling me that there are German tanks patrolling on Red Square.
You are drunk and I’m going back to bed’.
Religion is a cause of numerous conflicts and bloody wars throughout the history of mankind.
The emphasis on peaceful coexistence doesn’t mean that the Soviet Union accepted a static world with clear lines. Socialism is inevitable and the "correlations of forces" were moving towards socialism.