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Legacy

The first monument to Georgy Zhukov was erected in Mongolia, in memory of the Battle of Khalkin Gol. After the dissolution of the Soviet Union, this monument was one of the few that did not suffer from anti-Soviet backlash in former Communist states. There is a statue of Zhukov on horseback as he appeared at the 1945 victory parade on Manezhnaya Square at the entrance of the Kremlin in Moscow. Another statue of Zhukov in Moscow is located on Prospekt Marshala Zhukova. A statue of Zhukov is located in the town of Irbit, in the Sverdlovsk Oblast. Other statues of Zhukov are found in Omsk, Irkutsk and Yekaterinburg.

A minor planet, 2132 Zhukov, discovered in 1975, by Soviet astronomer Lyudmila Chernykh, is named in his honour. In 1996, Russia adopted the Order of Zhukov and the Zhukov Medal to commemorate the 100th anniversary of his birthday.

Nobel laureate Joseph Brodsky 's poem On the Death of Zhukov ("Na smert' Zhukova", 1974) is regarded by critics as one of the best poems on the war written by an author of the post-war generation. The poem is a stylization of The Bullfinch, Derzhavin 's elegy on the death of Generalissimo Suvorov in 1800. Brodsky draws a parallel between the careers of these two famous commanders. Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn re-interpreted Zhukov's memoirs in the short story Times of Crisis.

In his book of recollections, Zhukov was critical of the role the Soviet leadership played during the war. The first edition of Vospominaniya i razmyshleniya was published during Leonid Brezhnev 's premiership only on the conditions that criticism of Stalin was removed, and that Zhukov add a (fictional) episode of a visit to Brezhnev, politruk on the Southern Front, to consult on military strategy.

In 1989, parts of previously unpublished and censored chapters from Zhukov's memoir were published by Pravda, which his daughter said had been hidden in a safe until they could be published. The excerpts included criticism of the 1937–1939 purges for annihilating "any thousands of outstanding party workers" and stated that Stalin had played no role in directing the war effort, although he often issued orders devised by the general staff as if they were his own.

Appraisals of Zhukov's career vary. For example, historian Konstantin Zaleski claimed that Zhukov exaggerated his own role in World War II. Marshal Konstantin Rokossovsky said that the planning and decisions for the Battle of Kursk were made without Zhukov, that he only arrived just before the battle, made no decisions and left soon after.

Zhukov also received many positive comments, mostly from his Army companions, from the modern Russian Army, and from his Allied contemporaries. General of the Army Dwight D. Eisenhower stated that, because of Zhukov's achievements fighting the Nazis, the United Nations owed him much more than any other military leader in the world. "The war in Europe ended with victory and nobody could have done that better than Marshal Zhukov—we owed him that credit. He is a modest person, and so we can't undervalue his position in our mind. When we can come back to our Motherland, there must be another type of Order in Russia, an Order named after Zhukov, which is awarded to everybody who can learn the bravery, the far vision, and the decisiveness of this soldier."

Marshal of the Soviet Union Aleksandr Vasilevsky commented that Zhukov is one of the most outstanding and brilliant military commanders of the Soviet military forces. Major General Sir Francis de Guingand, chief of staff of Field Marshal Bernard Montgomery, described Zhukov as a friendly person. John Gunther, who met Zhukov many times after the war, said that Zhukov was more friendly and honest than any of the other Soviet leaders.

John Eisenhower—son of Dwight Eisenhower—claimed that Zhukov was really ebullient and was a friend of his. Albert Axell in his work "Marshal Zhukov, the one who beat Hitler" claimed that Zhukov was a military genius like Alexander the Great and Napoleon. Axell also commented that Zhukov was a loyal communist and a patriot. At the end of his work about Zhukov, Otto Chaney concluded: "But Zhukov belongs to all of us. In the darkest period of World War II his fortitude and determination eventually triumphed. For Russians and people everywhere he remains an enduring symbol of victory on the battlefield."

In Russia, Zhukov is often credited for his "prophetic" words spoken to Konstantin Rokossovsky in Berlin in 1945: "We have liberated them, and they will never forgive us for that."