In the Navy, the Purge was as sweeping as in the land forces. Of the nine Fleet Admirals and Admirals First Grade, only one (Galler) survived the Purge, to die in prison after the war.186
First to be arrested was the brains of the Navy (though no longer holding naval position), R. A. Muklevich. Muklevich, a comfortable, strong-looking man, was an Old Bolshevik with an extraordinary career behind him. Born in 1890, he had become a Party member at the age of sixteen, and in the difficult years 1907 to 1909, still in his teens, had been secretary of the Party organization at Bialystok. He had been called up for the Imperial Navy in 1912 and been active in the Party’s military work from then through the Revolution. During the Civil War, he had served on the staff of various armies and fronts, become Deputy Director of the Army Academy in 1921, then served with military aviation from 1925, and finally taken over effective control of the fleet from 1926 to 1927. As Director of Naval Construction, he had played a leading role in the modernization of the Soviet Navy. His clear view of the problems and unambitious efficiency made him a natural and welcome associate of Tukhachevsky’s group.He was arrested in May 1937.187
He was not brought to public trial—indeed, there was no announcement made about the trial of any of the naval leaders. He and the Navy Commander-in-Chief, Admiral Orlov, were, however, denounced as accomplices of Tukhachevsky at the XVIIIth Party Congress in 1939. The attack on them, unlike those made on the Army men, contained a specific criticism of their military policies. People’s Commissar for Shipbuilding Tevosyan announced that they had opposed the idea of a powerful surface fleet and that their removal had made it possible to build “a most mighty attacking force”188—a chimera which diverted a large amount of Soviet effort into a hopeless and pointless attempt to match the major naval powers with a battle fleet.This is doubtless the factual basis to be found, as so often, for one of the incidents in Arthur Koestler’s
In any event, this argument cannot have been the main motive behind the Navy purge, whose origins were clearly the same as those of the purge in the Army and in the country as a whole. It was less a matter of settling technical disputes by executions than of using technical disputes as one excuse for executions. Muldevich confessed after a week’s severe torture in the Lefortovo prison.190
Next to fall was the Commander of the Naval Forces, Admiral Orlov, together with Admiral Sivkov, Commander of the Baltic Fleet, and Admiral Kozhanov, Commander of the Black Sea Fleet. Orlov was arrested in November 1937, but he seems to have been dismissed as early as June, when Admiral Viktorov, Commander of the Pacific Fleet and himself shortly to fall, was acting as Head of the Navy.191
With the leaders, their subordinates fell in scores.
The Navy by its very nature gave contact, or the possibility of contact, with foreigners. Soviet warships paid courtesy visits. They cruised in international waters. During the Second World War, these suspicious circumstances were to be much exacerbated, owing to collaboration with the Royal Navy at the Murmansk end of the Northern Convoy route. One of the chief figures in