Russian leaders gathered on Red Square on Sunday to commemorate the 100th birthday of Field Marshal Georgy Zhukov, the Soviet Union’s greatest World War II commander.

Zhukov, who led the Soviet forces into Berlin to end the war, had been exiled to a backwater command after the war by dictator Josef Stalin. Nikita Khrushchev made him defense minister in 1955, but fired him two years later.

His reputation was rehabilitated in the 1970s by Leonid Brezhnev and he is now revered as one of Russia’s greatest war heroes.