Feliks Gromov

Who is Feliks Gromov?

Fleet Admiral Feliks Nikolayevich Gromov is a former Commander-in-Chief of the Russian Navy. Gromov is married and has a daughter and a son.

Gromov was born in Vladivostok and joined the navy in 1955. He completed the S.O. Makarov Pacific Higher Naval School in 1959. He served as an officer on a destroyer and in 1961 served in the strategic rocket forces on an exchange programme. Gromov returned to the navy in 1962 and served on the Sverdlov class cruiser Admiral Senyavin and the Kotlin class destroyer Vdokhnovennyy. He subsequently commanded the cruisers Senyavin and the Dmitry Pozharsky.

In 1977 Gromov became commander of a squadron of surface ships in the Baltic Fleet and was transferred to the Soviet Northern Fleet in 1982. In 1984 he became deputy commander of the Soviet Northern Fleet and was promoted to its commander in 1988.

In 1992 Gromov was given command of the Russian Navy following the dissolution of the Soviet Union. He was promoted to Admiral of the Fleet by Boris Yeltsin in 1996 and retired in 1997 at age 60, the mandated retirement age for Admirals and Fleet Admirals.

The Jamestown Foundation speculated that Gromov was dismissed because of a Russian Pacific Fleet ammunition explosion which seems to have attracted wide attention.