120 years ago, on June 11, 1895, the Soviet statesman and military leader, Marshal of the Soviet Union Nikolai Aleksandrovich Bulganin was born. This person is interesting because he simultaneously held high government and military posts. Bulganin was the only person in the history of the USSR who three times headed the board of the State Bank of the USSR and twice - the military department (Minister of the USSR Armed Forces in 1947-1949 and Minister of Defense of the USSR in 1953-1955). The pinnacle of Bulganin's career was the post of chairman of the Council of Ministers of the USSR. Under Khrushchev, he fell into disgrace, and the Stavropol Economic Council became his last place of work.
The beginning of a conscious life with Nikolai was ordinary. He was born in Nizhny Novgorod, in the family of an employee (according to another version, his father was a clerk at the factories of the famous baker Bugrov at that time). He graduated from a real school. He worked as a modest electrician apprentice and clerk. Nikolai did not participate in the revolutionary movement. Only in March 1917 he joined the Bolshevik Party. He served in the protection of the Rastyapinsky plant of explosives in the Nizhny Novgorod province. A literate person was noticed, and since 1918 Bulganin served in the Cheka, where he began to quickly move up the career ladder. In 1918-1919. - Deputy Chairman of the Moscow-Nizhny Novgorod Railway Cheka. In 1919-1921. - Head of the sector of the operational unit for transport of the Special Department of the Turkestan Front. 1921-1922 - Head of the Transport Cheka of the Turkestan Military District. In Turkestan, Nikolai Bulganin had to fight the Basmachs. After the Civil War, he worked in the electrical engineering field.
Then Nikolai Bulganin promoted in the civil sphere, where he reached major government posts. By the beginning of the Great Patriotic War, Bulganin had such major positions as Chairman of the Executive Committee of the Moscow Soviet (1931-1937), Chairman of the Council of People's Commissars of the RSFSR (1937-1938), Deputy Chairman of the Council of People's Commissars of the USSR (1938-1944), Chairman of the Board of the State Bank USSR (1938-1945).
Bulganin was a smart business executive, and went through a good school. He worked in the Cheka, the state apparatus, headed the largest enterprise in Moscow - the Moscow Kuibyshev Electrozavod, was the head of the Moscow City Council and the Council of People's Commissars. No wonder his electrical plant fulfilled the first five-year plan in two and a half years and became famous throughout the country. As a result, he was entrusted with the economy of Moscow. True, he was not a unique manager like Beria. He could not offer anything original. Bulganin was a good performer, not a generator of ideas. He never objected to the authorities, he knew all the bureaucratic tricks and tricks.
With the beginning of the war, Nikolai Bulganin put on his military uniform again. In June 1941, the chief banker of the Soviet state was promoted to lieutenant general and became a member of the Military Council of the Western Direction. Then he was a member of the Military Council of the Western Front, the 2nd Baltic and 1st Belorussian fronts.
It must be said that the appointment of major state and party leaders to military positions during this period was commonplace. Members of the Military Councils of the fronts were such prominent Soviet state and party leaders as Khrushchev, Kaganovich and Zhdanov. The fronts often benefited from this, since large figures had more opportunities to knock out additional funds from various departments. The same Bulganin, in the midst of the battle for Moscow, turned to V. P. Pronin, who replaced him as chairman of the Moscow City Council, with a request to involve the capital's trust for the movement of buildings in the business of rescuing stuck tanks and other heavy weapons from the swamps. Muscovites helped the military, and as a result, many "additional" combat vehicles took part in the defense of the capital. Nikolai Bulganin often came with various requests to Mikoyan, who was in charge of supplying the Red Army. Mikoyan helped as much as he could.
But on the other hand, such figures as Bulganin and Khrushchev (who was partly to blame for the hardest failure in the southern strategic direction) did not understand military affairs. So, the commander of the Western Front GK Zhukov later gave the following assessment to a member of the military council: “Bulganin knew very little about military affairs and, of course, did not understand anything about operational and strategic issues. But, being an intuitively developed, cunning person, he managed to approach Stalin and infiltrate his trust. At the same time, Zhukov appreciated Bulganin as a good business executive and was calm about the rear.
I. S. Konev, who commanded the Western Front in 1943, was dismissed from his post as having failed to cope with his duties. According to Konev, Bulganin was guilty of this. “I,” notes Marshal Konev, “got the impression that my withdrawal from the front was not a direct consequence of my conversation with Stalin. This conversation and my disagreement were, as they say, the last straw. Obviously, Stalin's decision was the result of biased reports and oral reports from Bulganin, with whom I had a rather difficult relationship by that time. At first, when I assumed command of the front, he acted within the framework of the duties of a member of the Military Council, but recently he tried to interfere in the direct management of operations, not having enough knowledge of military affairs for this. I endured for some time, passed by attempts to act in this way, but in the end we had a big conversation with him, apparently, did not remain without consequences for me. After some time, the Supreme Commander-in-Chief admitted that it was wrong to remove Konev from office, and he cited this case as an example of the wrong attitude of a member of the Military Council to the commander.
After Bulganin left for the 2nd Baltic Front, a commission of the Supreme Command Headquarters, headed by GKO member Malenkov, arrived at the headquarters of the Western Front at the direction of Joseph Stalin. Within six months, the front undertook 11 operations, but did not achieve serious success. The Stavka commission revealed major mistakes made by the front commander of Sokolovsky and members of the military council Bulganin (formerly) and Mehlis (who was in office at the time of the check). Sokolovsky lost his post, and Bulganin received a reprimand. Bulganin, as a member of the Front Military Council, "did not report to Headquarters about the presence of major shortcomings at the front."
The activities of the 2nd Baltic Front were also studied by the Headquarters. It turned out that not a single operation during the period when the front was commanded by Army General M. M. Popov, did not give serious results, the front did not fulfill its tasks, although it had an advantage in forces over the enemy and used up a large amount of ammunition. The mistakes of the 2nd Baltic Front were associated with the unsatisfactory activities of the front commander Popov and member of the military council Bulganin. Popov was removed from his post as front commander, Bulganin was removed from his post as a member of the Military Council.
Colonel-General V. M. Shatilov recalled that on the Baltic front Bulganin could not independently plot data on the Wehrmacht's defensive structures, revealed by intelligence, on a working map. P. Sudoplatov noted Bulganin's low military professionalism: “Bulganin's incompetence was simply amazing. I ran into him several times in the Kremlin during the meetings of the heads of the intelligence services. Bulganin did not understand such issues as the rapid deployment of forces and means, the state of combat readiness, strategic planning … This man did not have the slightest political principles - an obedient slave to any leader."
However, Stalin had his own reason. For the generals, especially in the conditions of the catastrophic start of the war, supervision was required. Military professionalism was sacrificed for political expediency. It was necessary to ensure that a new Tukhachevsky did not appear in the army, claiming the role of Napoleon. In the conditions of the war with Nazi Germany, which led almost all of Europe, a military mutiny in the Red Army threatened a military-political catastrophe. Bulganin and other party leaders were a kind of "sovereign's eye" at the front. Nikolai Bulganin, to all appearances, did a good job with this matter, since his position throughout the war had never been shaken, despite the reprimands. In some respects, Bulganin can be compared with the ex-Minister of Defense of the Russian Federation A. Serdyukov. Obedient and diligent, they carried out the will of the Kremlin and did not ask unnecessary questions.
Already in May 1944, Nikolai Bulganin went up to a promotion, became a member of the Military Council of one of the main fronts - the 1st Belorussian. The success of Operation Bagration in Belarus led to further career growth for Bulganin. Bulganin became an army general. Since November 1944, Bulganin is the Deputy People's Commissar of Defense of the USSR, a member of the State Defense Committee (GKO) of the USSR. Since February 1945 - a member of the Headquarters of the Supreme High Command. Since March 1946 - First Deputy Minister of the Armed Forces of the USSR. In March 1947, he again took up a major government post - Deputy Chairman of the Council of Ministers of the USSR. At the same time, Bulganin became the Minister of the Armed Forces of the USSR. In 1947, Bulganin was awarded the rank of marshal.
On the one hand, it is surprising that a person who does not have military leadership, does not know much about military affairs, occupies the highest military posts in the Soviet Union. Bulganin had a collection of orders that many outstanding military leaders did not have. So, Bulganin was awarded in 1943-1945. four military orders - Suvorov (1st and 2nd degrees) and two orders of Kutuzov 1st degree, and also had the Order of the Red Banner. On the other hand, it was Stalin's policy. He "diluted" the generals, the professional military. The highest military elite of the country included "politicians in uniform." It is no coincidence that after the end of the war, Bulganin became the right hand of the Supreme in the Armed Forces, bypassing such famous commanders as Zhukov, Rokossovsky, Konev and Vasilevsky.
Bulganin led the Ministry of Defense with the help of professionals: his first deputy was Marshal Vasilevsky, the chief of the General Staff was General of the Army Shtemenko, and the fleet was headed by Kuznetsov. I must say that he easily headed such different organizations as the State Bank or the Ministry of Defense, since he was an executor. He simply passed on the instructions of Stalin and the Politburo to his subordinates and monitored their strict implementation.
After the war, Bulganin took part in the "hunt" for Zhukov, when the famous commander fell into disgrace and was "exiled" to the secondary Odessa military district. According to the testimony of the former People's Commissar and Commander-in-Chief of the Navy, Admiral of the Fleet of the Soviet Union N. G. Kuznetsov, Bulganin took part in the persecution of the naval commanders. Bulganin used a denunciation of the alleged illegal transfer of a parachute torpedo, ammunition samples and navigational charts to the British allies. Bulganin fanned this rumor and brought the case to court. As a result, four admirals - N. G. Kuznetsov, L. M. Galler, V. A. Alafuzov and G. A. Stepanov was first subjected to a "court of honor" and then to a criminal court. Kuznetsov was removed from office and demoted in military rank by three steps, the rest received real terms of imprisonment.
A vast experience of behind-the-scenes intrigue and bureaucratic tricks helped Bulganin succeed after Stalin's death, although not for long. Bulganin did not pretend to be a leader, but was not going to fade into the background. Bulganin was a friend of Khrushchev, so he supported him. In turn, Khrushchev needed the support of the army. In addition, they were united by fear of Beria. After Stalin's death, Bulganin headed the Ministry of Defense (it included the military and naval ministries of the USSR). Moreover, he remained the 1st Deputy Chairman of the Council of Ministers of the USSR.
Bulganin played an important role in the conspiracy against Beria. With the consent of Khrushchev, he agreed with his first deputy Marshal G. K. Zhukov and Colonel-General K. S. Moskalenko, commander of the Moscow Air Defense District, about their personal participation in the elimination of Beria. As a result, Beria was removed from the political Olympus (there is a version that he was immediately killed). Bulganin willingly joined the chorus of critics of L. Beria, when he was declared an "enemy of the party, the people", "an international agent and a spy", forgetting about all his previous services to the Motherland.
When in 1955, during the internal political struggle, Malenkov was removed from the post of chairman of the Council of Ministers, Bulganin took his post. He yielded to the Ministry of Defense to Zhukov. Bulganin, together with Khrushchev, made a number of visits (to Yugoslavia, India). Bulganin fully supported Khrushchev in the case of Stalin's "personality criticism" when he chaired a closed session of the XX Congress, held on February 25, 1956. Thanks to his support, as well as some other members of the Presidium of the Central Committee, Khrushchev managed to suppress the resistance of those members of the Soviet leadership who considered harmful raise the issue of the 1930s repression.
However, gradually Bulganin, apparently frightened by Khrushchev's radicalism, began to move away from him, and ended up in the same camp with his former opponents. Bulganin entered the so-called. "Anti-party group". However, thanks to the support of Zhukov and other members of the Central Committee, Khrushchev remained at the pinnacle of power. It seemed that Bulganin would survive in the course of this clash. Bulganin admitted and condemned his mistakes, helped to expose the activities of the "anti-party group." The case came with a severe reprimand with a warning.
However, Khrushchev soon removed Bulganin from the country's leadership. First, Bulganin lost the post of head of the Council of Ministers, then he was transferred to the post of chairman of the board of the State Bank. In August 1958, Bulganin was actually sent into exile - to the post of chairman of the economic council in Stavropol. He will be stripped of the rank of marshal. In 1960, Bulganin retired. Bulganin died in 1975.
