What was the contribution to the victory of the Supreme Commander-in-Chief? The head of the scientific sector of the Russian Military Historical Society, Candidate of Historical Sciences Yuri Nikiforov shared his views on this matter with the "Historian"
Photo by Ekaterina Koptelova
The role of the Supreme Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces of the USSR Joseph Stalin in the defeat of Nazi Germany is still a topic of heated publicistic discussions. Some say that the Soviet Union won the war solely thanks to the military and organizational talents of the country's leader. Others, on the contrary, assert: the war was won not by Stalin, but by the people, and not thanks to, but in spite of the Supreme, whose numerous mistakes allegedly only multiplied the price of victory.
Of course, these are extremes. But it just so happened that for many decades the figure of Stalin has been evaluated according to the principle of "either-or": either a genius or a villain. Meanwhile, in history, semitones are always important, estimates based on an analysis of sources and elementary common sense are important. And so we decided to talk about Stalin's role in the war sine ira et studio - without anger and, if possible, without bias, to figure out what was his contribution to the Victory.
- For many years, there was an opinion that in the first days of the Great Patriotic War, General Secretary of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks, Joseph Stalin, was almost in prostration, could not lead the country. How true is this?
- This, like a number of other myths, has long been refuted by professional historians. As a result of the archival revolution of the early 1990s, previously inaccessible documents became known, in particular, the Journal of Stalin's visits in his Kremlin office. This document has long been declassified, fully published and allows us to make an unambiguous conclusion: there can be no talk of any prostration of Stalin. Every day, during the first week of the war, members of the Politburo of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks, people's commissars and military leaders came to his office, meetings were held there.
STALIN'S VISITING JOURNAL
IN HIS KREMLIN OFFICE HAS BEEN CLASSIFIED FOR A LONG TIME, FULLY PUBLISHED AND ALLOWS TO MAKE A UNIQUE CONCLUSION: THERE WAS NO SPACE OF THE COUNTRY LEADER IN THE FIRST DAYS OF THE WAR
The head of the country spent several days after June 29 and until July 3 at his dacha. It is not known exactly what he did there. But it is known that he returned to the Kremlin with drafts of resolutions of the State Defense Committee (GKO), the Council of People's Commissars and other departments, which were adopted immediately upon his return to the Kremlin. Apparently, at the dacha, Stalin worked on these documents and the text of his famous speech, with which he addressed the Soviet people on July 3. When you read it carefully, you realize that its preparation took time. It was clearly not composed in half an hour.
- To what extent does Stalin bear responsibility for the failures of the first months of the war? What is his main mistake?
- This question is one of the most difficult. Even among historians who deal specifically with it, there is no single, canonical point of view.
I would emphasize that the Soviet Union (as well as the Russian Empire on the eve of the First World War), not only in terms of economic, but also in terms of geographic and climatic conditions, was in a more difficult position than Germany. And above all from the point of view of the deployment of armed forces in the future theater of military operations. To verify this, just look at the map. We always needed much more time to mobilize, as well as to concentrate and deploy the army, which was to engage in battle with the enemy.
On the eve of the Great Patriotic War, Stalin faced the same problem that the Imperial General Staff fought before the First World War: how not to lose the "race to the border", how to mobilize and deploy in time. In 1941, as in 1914, our conscript, having received a summons, had to sit on a cart, get to the military registration and enlistment office, which was often at a very distant distance, then get to the railway and so on.
In Germany, everything was easier with this …
- Judge for yourself: it took several weeks to deploy and bring on alert the multimillion army of 1941. And the main thing is that if a decision is made simultaneously in Moscow and Berlin, the Soviet Union, for objective reasons, loses this "race to the border". This problem, by the way, was recognized in the General Staff, as evidenced by the content of the Note by Georgy Zhukov of May 15, 1941 with considerations on the strategic deployment of the Red Army, as well as the General Staff summary of June 22, where Zhukov, quite deliberately, in my opinion, inserted the phrase for Stalin: "The enemy, preempting us in deployment …" Unfortunately, the People's Commissar of Defense Semyon Timoshenko and the Chief of the General Staff of the Red Army Zhukov did not find an adequate answer to this problem.
It was much easier for the Nazis to organize a phased concentration of their invasion group on the Soviet-German border in such a way that until the last moment the Kremlin remained in the dark about their plans. We know that the tank and motorized units of the Wehrmacht were transferred to the border last.
Judging by the well-known documents, the understanding of the inevitability of an imminent German attack on the USSR came on June 10-12, when it was almost impossible to do anything, especially since the generals could not declare open mobilization or begin to carry out accelerated troop transfers to the border without Stalin's sanction. But Stalin did not give such a sanction. It turned out that the Red Army, being approximately equal in number of personnel to the forces of the invasion and surpassing them in tanks, aviation and artillery, was not able to use all its potential in the first weeks of the war. Divisions and corps of the first, second and third echelons entered the battle in parts, at different times. Their defeat in this sense was programmed.
- What decisions were made to bring the troops into combat readiness?
- Back in the spring, a partial mobilization was carried out under the guise of Large Training Camps (BTS), the transfer of forces to the state border began. In the last week before the war, orders were given to move the divisions of the border districts to the concentration areas, to camouflage airfields and other military facilities. Literally on the eve of the war, there was an order to separate the front directorates from the district headquarters and to promote them to command posts. The commanders and staffs of the border districts and the armies subordinate to them are responsible for the fact that many orders and orders of the People's Commissariat of Defense and the General Staff were executed with a delay or generally remained only on paper. To blame Stalin for the delay in bringing the troops to combat readiness, as has been the custom since the time of Nikita Khrushchev, I think it is wrong.
Nevertheless, as the head of state, Stalin had a duty to delve deeper into the difficulties of ensuring timely mobilization of troops and bringing them to combat readiness and to induce the military to act more energetically. He, it seems, until the very last moment was not sure that the war would begin with a surprise attack by the Germans and that this would happen on the morning of June 22. Accordingly, no intelligible, unambiguous signal from the Kremlin on this score passed through the “vertical of power”. Only on the night of June 21-22 was the appropriate decision made and directive No. 1 was sent to the troops. So the responsibility for the defeats of the first weeks and even months of the war cannot be removed from Stalin: he is to blame, and there is no way to get away from it.
Seeing off to the front
- You can often hear: "But the intelligence reported!"
- The assertions that Stalin had exact data on the date of the beginning of the war are incorrect. Soviet intelligence obtained a lot of information about Germany's preparation for an attack on the USSR, but it was extremely difficult, if not impossible, to draw unambiguous conclusions about the timing and nature of the attack. Many reports reflected German misinformation about Germany's preparation of ultimatum demands against the Soviet Union, in particular about the rejection of Ukraine. The German special services have been spreading such rumors on purpose.
Probably, the Kremlin expected that the first shot would be preceded by some kind of diplomatic demarche on the part of Hitler, as was the case with Czechoslovakia and Poland. Receiving such an ultimatum made it possible to enter into negotiations, albeit deliberately failed ones, and gain the time so necessary for the Red Army to complete the preparatory measures.
- What do you see as the main reasons for the failures of the first years of the war?
- The main reasons for the failures of 1941-1942 are "derived" from the catastrophe of the summer of 1941. Industry had to be hastily evacuated to the east. Hence the sharp drop in production. In the winter of 1941-1942, the army had little equipment, there was nothing to shoot with. Hence the high losses. This is the first thing.
Secondly, when the cadre army died surrounded, it was replaced by poorly trained people who had just been mobilized. They were hastily thrown to the front to close the gaps that had formed. Such divisions were less efficient. This means that more of them were required.
Thirdly, huge losses in tanks and artillery in the first months of the war led to the fact that our command in the winter of 1941-1942 lacked the main instrument of a successful offensive - mechanized units. And you can't win a war by defense. I had to rebuild the cavalry. The infantry near Moscow in the literal sense of the word went into a counteroffensive …
- … on snow and off-road.
- Exactly! Large casualties were the result of systemic problems, and those arose as a result of heavy defeat in border battles. Naturally, there were also subjective reasons for our failures, associated with the adoption of a number of erroneous decisions (both at the front and in the rear), but they did not determine the general course of events.
Germans are advancing
- What was the mechanism for making decisions on military issues?
- This mechanism is being reconstructed based on the memories of people who participated in the discussion and decision-making. Everything was centered around the figure of Stalin as the chairman of the State Defense Committee and the Supreme Commander-in-Chief. All issues were resolved at meetings in his office, where people were invited who were in charge and in the sphere of responsibility of which these issues were. This approach allowed the Soviet leadership to successfully solve the problem of coordinating the needs of the front with the evacuation, the deployment of military production, construction and, in general, with the life of the whole country.
- Did the Supreme Commander-in-Chief's approaches to decision-making change during the war? Did Stalin of the beginning of the war differ greatly from Stalin, who signed the order "Not a step back!" In July 1942? How and in what way did Stalin in 1945 differ from Stalin in 1941?
- First of all, I would agree with the historian Makhmut Gareev, who has long drawn attention to the fallacy of portraying Stalin exclusively as a civilian. By the beginning of World War II, he had more military experience than Winston Churchill or Franklin Delano Roosevelt.
Let me remind you that during the Civil War, Joseph Stalin was personally responsible for the defense of Tsaritsyn. He also took part in the Soviet-Polish war of 1920. On the eve of the Great Patriotic War, the General Secretary of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks was in charge of industrialization, the creation of the country's military-industrial complex. That is, this side of the matter was well known to him.
Of course, from the point of view of the operational art required of the commander, he made mistakes. But we must not forget that Stalin viewed events from the point of view of a grand strategy. Usually criticized for his decision in early 1942 to go on the offensive along the entire Soviet-German front. This is interpreted as a gross miscalculation by Stalin, who allegedly overestimated the successes achieved by the Red Army during the counteroffensive near Moscow. Critics do not take into account the fact that the dispute between Stalin and Zhukov was not about whether it was necessary to go over to a general offensive. Zhukov was also in favor of the offensive. But he wanted all reserves to be thrown into the central direction - against Army Group Center. Zhukov hoped that this would bring down the German front here. But Stalin did not allow this to be done.
- Why?
- The fact is that Stalin, as the leader of the country and the Supreme Commander-in-Chief, had before his eyes the entire Soviet-German front. We must not forget that at that time there was a question about the survival of Leningrad. About 100,000 people died there every month. Not allocating forces to try to break through the blockade ring would be a crime against the Leningraders. Therefore, the Luban operation begins, which then ended with the death of the 2nd Shock Army of General Andrei Vlasov. At the same time, Sevastopol was perishing. Stalin tried, with the help of an assault force that landed in Feodosia, to draw off part of the enemy's forces from Sevastopol. The defense of the city continued until July 1942.
RESPONSIBILITY FOR LOSSES OF THE FIRST WEEKS
AND EVEN MONTHS OF WAR CANNOT BE REMOVED FROM STALIN: HE IS GUILTY, AND ANYWHERE WILL NOT GET AWAY FROM THIS
Thus, the Supreme Commander-in-Chief in that situation could not give all the reserves to Zhukov. As a result, neither the Rzhev-Vyazemskaya operation nor the attempt to break the blockade of Leningrad were successful. And then Sevastopol had to be abandoned. After the fact, Stalin's decision looks erroneous. But put yourself in his place when, in early 1942, he made a decision …
- It is unlikely that Stalin's critics would want to be in his place.
- We must also take into account the fact that the Germans' intelligence was better organized than ours. Our command presented the theater of military operations worse. The Kiev "cauldron" of 1941 is a vivid confirmation of this. Not Stalin, but intelligence of the Southwestern Front overlooked the second, southern "claw" of the encirclement.
In addition, we must pay tribute to the Hitlerite generals. In many cases, they acted in such a way that they misled the command of the Red Army. And in 1941, they also owned the strategic initiative.
Stalin needed time to learn to listen to his subordinates and reckon with objective circumstances. At the beginning of the war, he sometimes demanded the impossible from the troops, not always having a good idea of how a decision made in the office could be executed directly in the troops and whether it could be executed at all within the specified time frame, in certain specific circumstances. According to the testimony of those of our military leaders who most often communicated with him during the war years, Georgy Zhukov and Alexander Vasilevsky, in 1941 and 1942 Stalin was often overly nervous, reacted sharply to failures and emerging problems. It was difficult to communicate with him.
- I pressed on the burden of responsibility.
- Yes. Plus constant overload. It seems that at the beginning of the war he tried to take on everything, tried to delve into all the issues to the smallest detail, trusted very few people. The defeats of 1941 shocked him. He should have been tormented by the question: “Before the war, we invested so much money in strengthening the country's defense capability, the whole country spent so much effort … Where is the result? Why are we retreating?"
- You touched upon the topic of the relationship between Stalin and Zhukov. How was the hierarchy in the relations between the country's leader and the largest commander built during the war years? Did Stalin listen more to his words or did he give orders more often?
- Zhukov did not immediately become in the eyes of Stalin the person who can be unconditionally trusted. At the end of July 1941, after leaving Smolensk, he was removed from the post of Chief of the General Staff of the Red Army. Stalin sent Zhukov to command the front. At the beginning of the war, he took pictures of many, appointed many. I was looking for people to rely on.
Two events became fatal for Georgy Zhukov. When he was appointed commander of the Leningrad Front, there was a glitch in the Barbarossa plan. Hitler then decided to transfer the tank divisions of Erich Göpner's group near Moscow. Although Zhukov's role in saving the city on the Neva cannot be denied. He made the defenders of Leningrad fight to the death. When the new commander arrived at the Leningrad Front, he had to deal with panic.
THE MAIN BUSINESS OF STALIN'S LIFE
BECAME THE DEATH OF FASCISM IN THE GREAT PATRIOTIC WAR. THIS IS DEFINED HIS CONTRIBUTION NOT ONLY TO THE HISTORY OF OUR COUNTRY, BUT TO THE HISTORY OF HUMANITY
After Zhukov put things in order near Leningrad and the situation there stabilized, with the same task - to save the city - Stalin transferred it to Moscow. A portrait of Georgy Konstantinovich was published in the newspapers. In the course of the Moscow battle, apparently, Zhukov managed to truly win the respect and trust of Stalin.
Gradually Zhukov turned into a man to whom the Supreme Commander-in-Chief began to entrust the solution of the most difficult and important tasks. So, when the Germans broke through to the Volga, he appointed Zhukov as his deputy and sent him to defend Stalingrad. And since Stalingrad also survived, confidence in Zhukov increased even more.
If we talk about the hierarchy, then it has always been like this: Stalin ordered, and Zhukov followed. To say, like some, that Zhukov could allegedly evade the orders of the Supreme Commander-in-Chief or act on his own initiative, disregarding the opinion from above, is stupid. Of course, during the war, Stalin increasingly gave him the right to make independent decisions. Already during the Battle of Stalingrad, in the telegrams of the Supreme Commander, Zhukov encountered the phrase “Make decisions on the spot”, including on the question of exactly when to go on the offensive. Trust was also expressed in the satisfaction of requests for the allocation of reserves and their distribution along the front.
- What was Stalin guided by in the selection of personnel in the first place?
- The decisive factor in the course of the war was the ability of leaders of all ranks - both at the front and in industry - to achieve the desired result. Generals who knew how to solve the tasks set by the Supreme Commander-in-Chief made a career. People had to prove their professional suitability by deed, that's all. This is the logic of war. In its conditions, Stalin had no time to pay attention to some purely personal moments. Even the denunciations of the political authorities did not make an impression on him. Compromising evidence was used when the war was won.
- You can often hear the opinion that the Soviet people won the war in spite of Stalin. How true is this statement?
- It's like saying that the Russian Empire won the Patriotic War of 1812 in spite of Alexander I, or the Northern War with the Swedes - in spite of Peter the Great. It is foolish to assert that Stalin only interfered with and harmed with his orders. In spite of the command, the soldiers at the front cannot do anything at all. As well as the workers in the rear. There can be no talk of any kind of self-organization of the people. The Stalinist system worked, which in the conditions of the most difficult war proved its effectiveness.
And it is often said that if it were not for Stalin's mistakes, the war would have been won "with little blood."
- When they say so, they seem to suggest that someone else in Stalin's place would have made different decisions. The question arises: what exactly are the solutions? Suggest an alternative! After all, the choice is made based on the available opportunities.
For example, propose a worthy alternative to the agreement signed by Molotov and Ribbentrop in Moscow on August 23, 1939, which in those circumstances would have been more beneficial from the point of view of ensuring the national and state interests of the Soviet Union. I will note that numerous critics of this step of the Soviet leadership were unable to offer anything intelligible on this score.
warlords
Generals of Victory. Generalissimo of the Soviet Union Joseph Stalin with marshals, generals and admirals. March 1946
The same can be said about 1941. After all, Stalin then, by the way, also thought that in the coming war with Germany the United States should be on our side. And for this it was important not to give the Americans a reason to "believe" that Hitler was only defending himself against the aggression of the USSR and that Stalin, and not Hitler, was to blame for unleashing the war.
- The favorite topic of liberal historians and journalists is the price of victory. It is argued that the USSR won at the expense of colossal human sacrifices. How true is this statement and what explains the unprecedented losses of the Soviet Union?
- I have always been unpleasant about the very formulation of the question in such terminology - "price" and "quality of the provided services." During the war, the question of the survival of the peoples of the USSR was decided. For the sake of saving their children and loved ones, Soviet people sacrificed their lives, it was the free choice of millions of people. Finally, multimillion-dollar sacrifices are not the price of victory, but the price of fascist aggression. Two-thirds of the human losses incurred by our country are the result of the extermination policy of the Nazi leadership to depopulate the occupied territories, these are victims of the Hitlerite genocide. Three out of five Soviet prisoners of war were killed.
The losses of the armed forces of the opposing sides are quite comparable. None of the serious historians sees any reason to criticize the data on losses in the armies, cited in the research of the team led by Colonel-General Grigory Krivosheev. Alternative counting methods lead to larger errors. So, according to these data, the irrecoverable losses of the Red Army amounted to about 12 million people (killed, died of wounds, missing and prisoners). But not all of these people died: about 3 million of them remained in the occupied territory and after the liberation were recruited or survived in captivity and returned home after the war. As for the total losses of the Soviet Union of 26.6 million people, there are reasons to believe that they are somewhat exaggerated, but this issue requires additional study.
- In the West, and even among our liberals, it is customary to equate Stalin with Hitler. How do you feel about the figure of Stalin and the historical memory of him?
- The notorious "equalization" of Stalin and Hitler should be viewed primarily in the context of propaganda technologies and measures designed to influence public consciousness. It has nothing to do with the search for historical truth, and indeed with science in general. Any Russian citizen thinking about the future of his country must understand and accept the following: historical figures of this magnitude must be protected from insults and caricatures in public space. By discrediting in one way or another the prominent figures of Russian history in the public consciousness, we willfully or unwittingly discredit a whole period of our history, the accomplishments of a whole generation of our ancestors. Stalin, as the leader of the country, remains a symbol of his era and of those people who built and won under his leadership. The main business of Stalin's life was the defeat of fascism in the Great Patriotic War. This determines his contribution not only to the history of our country, but also to the history of mankind.
