It is widely believed that one of the reasons for the defeat of the USSR at the initial stage of the war was Stalin's repression of the officer corps of the state in 1937-1938.
This accusation was used by Khrushchev in his famous report "On the personality cult." In it, he personally accused Stalin of "suspicion", his belief in "slander", because of which numerous cadres of commanders and political workers, down to the level of companies and battalions, were destroyed. According to him, Stalin destroyed almost all the cadres who had gained experience in waging war in Spain and the Far East.
We will not touch on the topic of the validity of repressions, we will study only two main statements on which the entire "black myth" is based:
- First: Stalin destroyed almost the entire command corps of the Red Army, as a result, by 1941, the USSR had no experienced commanders.
- Second: Many of the repressed were "genius commanders" (for example, Tukhachevsky), and their elimination caused enormous damage to the army and the country, they would have come in handy in the Great Patriotic War and, perhaps, the catastrophe of the initial period would not have happened.
The question of the number of repressed officers
Most often, the figure of 40 thousand people is mentioned, it was put into circulation by D. A. Volkogonov, and Volkogonov clarified that the number of repressed includes not only those who were shot and imprisoned, but also those who were simply dismissed without consequences.
After him there was already a "flight of fancy" - the number of those repressed by L. A. Kirshner increased to 44 thousand, and he says that this was half of the officer corps. The ideologist of the Central Committee of the CPSU, "the foreman of perestroika" A. N. Yakovlev speaks about 70 thousand, and claims that they were all killed. Rapoport and Geller increase the figure to 100 thousand, V. Koval claims that Stalin destroyed almost the entire officer corps of the USSR.
What really happened? According to archival documents, from 1934 to 1939, 56,785 people were dismissed from the ranks of the Red Army. During 1937-1938 35,020 people were dismissed, of which 19.1% (6692 people) - natural decline (died, dismissed due to illness, disability, drunkenness, etc.), 27.2% (9506) arrested, 41, 9% (14684) were dismissed for political reasons, 11.8% (4138) were foreigners (Germans, Finns, Estonians, Poles, Lithuanians, etc.), dismissed by the 1938 directive. They were later reinstated, were able to prove that they were dismissed unreasonably, 6650 people.
Quite a few were dismissed for drunkenness, such, by order of the Commissioner of Defense of December 28, 1938, were demanded to be expelled mercilessly. As a result, the figure of about 40 thousand turns out to be correct, but not all of them can be considered “victims”. If we exclude foreigners from the lists of repressed drunkards, dead, dismissed due to illness, then the scale of repression becomes much smaller. In 1937-1938. 9579 commanders were arrested, 1457 of them were reinstated in the rank of 1938-1939; 19106 people were dismissed for political reasons, 9247 people were reinstated.
The exact number of the repressed (and not all of them were shot) in 1937-1939 - 8122 people and 9859 people dismissed from the army.
The size of the officer corps
Some talkers like to claim that all, or almost all, of the officer corps of the USSR was repressed. This is a blatant lie. They even give figures for the shortage of command personnel.
But they "forget" to mention that at the end of the 30s there was a sharp increase in the number of the Red Army, tens of thousands of new officer command posts were created. In 1937, according to Voroshilov, there were 206,000 command personnel in the ranks of the army. By June 15, 1941, the number of command, commanding personnel of the army (without the political composition, the Air Force, the Navy, the NKVD) was 439,143 people, or 85, 2% of the staff.
The myth of the "genius commanders"
It is clear that the shortage of officers was caused by a sharp increase in the size of the army, the repressions had little impact on him.
According to the same Volkogonov, due to the repressions there was a sharp decrease in the intellectual potential of the army. He claims that by the beginning of 1941, only 7, 1% of the commanders had a higher education, 55, 9% - secondary, 24, 6% passed command courses, 12, 4% had no military education at all.
But these statements have little to do with reality. According to archival documents, the drop in the share of officers with a secondary military education is explained by a significant influx of reserve officers into the army, from extra-conscripts who have completed courses of junior lieutenants, and not by repression. In the pre-war years, there was an increase in the proportion of officers who received an academic education. In 1941, their percentage was the highest for the entire pre-war period - 7, 1%, before the mass repressions in 1936 it was 6, 6%. During the period of repression, there was a steady increase in the number of commanders who received secondary and higher military education.
How did the repression affect the generals?
Before the beginning of the repressions, 29% of the top commanding staff had an academic education, in 1938 - 38%, in 1941 - 52%. If you look at the figures for the military leaders who were arrested and appointed in their place, they indicate the growth of people with an academic education. On the whole, according to the "generals", the number of those appointed with higher education exceeds the number of those arrested by 45%. For example: three deputy people's commissars were arrested, none of them had a higher military education, and two of those appointed to replace them had; of the arrested chiefs of military districts, three had an "academy", of the newly appointed - 8.
That is, the level of education of the high command only increased after the repressions.
There is another interesting aspect of the repression of the "generals": the arrested Gamarnik, Primakov, Tukhachevsky, Fedko, Yakir, everyone except Tukhachevsky, who fought a few months before captivity, did not participate in the First World War. And Zhukov, Konev, Malinovsky, Budyonny, Malinovsky, Rokossovsky, Tolbukhin started it as ordinary soldiers. The first group occupied high posts, rather for ideological reasons, and not for military ones, and in the second they slowly (remember Suvorov and Kutuzov) rose, thanks to their talents and skills. They got real experience in army management, going from the bottom to the top of the military career.
As a result, “genius military leaders” became such, because they joined the Bolsheviks in time: Primakov in 1914, Gamarnik in 1916, Uborevich, Yakir, Fedko in 1917, Tukhachevsky in 1918. Another group joined the party, having already become military leaders: Konev in 1918, Zhukov, Rokossovsky in 1919, Malinovsky in 1926, Vasilevsky, Tolbukhin in 1938.
