On 7 May 1940, three new marshals were appointed: the new People's Commissar of Defence, Semyon Timoshenko, Boris Shaposhnikov, and Grigory Kulik.

During World War II, Kulik was demoted for incompetence, and the rank of Marshal of the Soviet Union was given to a number of military commanders who earned it on merit.

In 1943, Stalin himself was made a Marshal of the Soviet Union, and in 1945, he was joined by his intelligence and police chief Lavrentiy Beria.

Thereafter the rank was awarded only to professional soldiers, with the exception of Leonid Brezhnev, who made himself a marshal in 1976, and Dmitry Ustinov, who was prominent in the arms industry and was appointed Minister of Defence in July 1976.

The last Marshal of the Soviet Union was Dmitry Yazov, appointed in 1990, who was imprisoned after the failed coup against Mikhail Gorbachev in 1991.