In late 1941, he helped coordinate the Soviet counter-offensive at the Battle of Moscow and drove German forces from the capital.

In April 1944, Sokolovsky was named chief of staff of the 1st Ukrainian Front under Georgy Zhukov, a position he served until the end of the war.

Sokolovsky was born into a Belarusian peasant family in Kozliki, a small town in the province of Grodno (now in Białystok County in eastern Poland, then part of the Russian Empire).

[1] He began his formal military schooling in 1919, but was frequently called up by the Red Army and forced to leave his schoolwork.

After World War II, Sokolovsky became the deputy commander-in-chief of the Soviet Forces in East Germany until July 3, 1946.

His walking out of a meeting of the Allied Control Council on 20 March 1948 as the Soviet representative on that body effectively immobilized it from that date.

In 1949 he became the Soviet Union's Deputy Minister of Defense, a position he held until 1952, when he was made the Chief of the General Staff.

Sokolovsky appears as a prominent figure in William T. Vollmann's 2005 National Book Award-winning novel, Europe Central.