The Great Terror

In the Finnish War of 1939 to 1940, the “initial incompetence of the Voroshilov–Mekhlis clique literally plunged the Red Army into disaster,” says John Erickson.²⁶ He adds that apart from this high-level failure there was a fatal lack of the “nerve” that Tukhachevsky had insisted on in junior commanders: independence of spirit had been destroyed by the Purges.

The German General Staff’s secret rating of the Red Army at the end of 1939 spoke of it as a “gigantic military instrument.” Although finding the “principles of leadership good,” it added “the leadership itself is, however, too young and inexperienced.”²⁷ In 1940, German intelligence, warning against an underestimation of the Red Army, felt that nevertheless it would take four years before that Army was back to its 1937 level of efficiency.

²⁸

There were two positive ingredients in the gloomy post-Purge scene. First, Army Commander Shaposhnikov, the Tsarist colonel, had never lost Stalin’s trust. Through the debacle, he contrived to seek out and promote talent. As Chief of Staff his powers were limited, but he brought into the senior command posts a number of efficient officers, even though not enough to make up for those rising through the whims of Stalin, Mekhlis, and Voroshilov.

Second, by great good luck, two of the old First Cavalry Army officers were fair, or good, soldiers. After Voroshilov’s Finnish effort, Timoshenko, who had picked up the pieces and was now (7 May 1940) a Marshal, was made Defense Commissar. At the same time, Zhukov took the newly revived rank of full General, and then various key commands, culminating in his appointment as Chief of Staff in January 1941.

The reforms which took place between 1940 and the German attack on Russia in 1941 were inadequate, but without them the Red Army would probably have been completely ruined in the first weeks of Hitler’s assault. Timoshenko, in effect, attempted to restore the position as it had existed under Tukhachevsky. But three years of degeneration could not be recouped in a few months.

Moreover, with Timoshenko, the grotesque Kulik, also from Stalin’s Tsaritsyn entourage of the Civil War, and commonly described in the Soviet literature as a bullying incompetent,²⁹ was made Marshal and put in charge of the artillery arm; and another ineffective First Cavalry veteran, Tyulenev, became full General, together with Zhukov and Meretskov (the latter arrested early in the war and confessing under torture to being a terrorist plotter, but released in September 1941).

In fact, as a result of the 1940 promotions, four out of the five Marshals, two out of the three full Generals, and two of the new Colonel-Generals were from Stalin’s Civil War group. Of the eight, two were to prove useful appointments. The others ranged from mediocre to disastrous. Stalin’s concessions to military reality were not yet whole-hearted. We can be reasonably certain that but for the sharp jolt of the Finnish War, Timoshenko would not have been allowed to carry out his partial program of revitalization.

The task was tremendous—indeed, given the circumstances, impossible. But some improvement could be effected. The dual-command system was, after all, abandoned on 12 August 1940. In September, Mekhlis was removed from the Political Administration of the Army. A partial reversion to Tukhachevsky’s training methods set in. To create a new leadership and a new spirit could nevertheless not be done in the time remaining. Timoshenko was a vast improvement on Voroshilov, but the latter, and a large number of Stalinist arrivistes, remained in positions of power. And Stalin himself, with his long refusal to face the possibility of a German attack, was in final control.

When the German invasion was on the point of being launched, a leading commentator was doubtful “whether any consistent plan for the defense of the Soviet Union existed, even at this late hour….”³⁰

Stalin’s attitude towards the Nazi-Soviet Pact of 1939 is one of the most peculiar things about his entire career. The man who had never attached the slightest value to verbal assurances or paper promises does really seem to have thought, or hoped, that Hitler would not attack Russia. Even when overwhelming evidence was sent to him, by Soviet intelligence, by the British, by German deserters, that the Nazis were massing for attack, he gave strict orders that such reports should be treated as provocations. As far as can be seen, it was in the genuine hope of persuasion that he remarked to Schulenberg, “We must remain friends,” and told Colonel Krebs, “We will remain friends with you in any event.”³¹

During the 1939 to 1941 period, attacks on the British were encouraged, but no mention even of the word fascism was allowed. The Counselor of the Soviet Embassy in Paris, Nikolai Ivanov, was actually sentenced to five years for “anti-German views,” and the sentence was confirmed—doubtless through bureaucratic inefficiency—in September 1941!³²