One of the secrets of the 20th century is what was the true scale of repressions against the highest command staff of the Red Army? In the early 1960s and late 1980s, the entire Soviet press wrote essays about executed commanders, offering readers exclusively emotions instead of archival documents. As a result, a myth took root in the public consciousness that 40 thousand representatives of the Red Army command staff were allegedly physically exterminated before the war. What was it really like?

Repressions in the Red Army

Did Stalin's “purges” help win the Great Patriotic War?

Today, almost every publication about the repressions of the late 1930s in the Red Army writes about 40 thousand “executed military leaders” (why not 30 or 50 thousand, for example, who can say?). It is clear that the authors are simply copying this figure from each other. Where did it originally come from, where is the original source?

The myth of 40 thousand executed

These data are taken from the RGVA (Russian State Archive of Military History): Fund 37837, inventory 10, file No. 142, sheet 93 - certificate, dated September 19, 1938, in which the head of the 6th department of the Personnel Directorate of the Command Staff of the People's Commissariat of Defense of the USSR, Colonel Shiryaev, presented Deputy People's Commissar of Defense, Army Commissar 1st Rank Efim Shchadenko, data on the number of commanders and political workers dismissed from the ground forces and the Air Force from January 1937 to September 1938. This document was first published in the open press, in the Military Historical Journal, in the January 1993 issue. So, in 1937, 20,643 people were dismissed, in 1938 - 16,118. Total - 36,761 military personnel dismissed from the ranks of the Red Army. To this figure were added less than 4 thousand dismissed naval commanders and political workers from the Navy. The result was a well-known figure - 40 thousand “victims” of Stalin’s terror.
But dismissed does not mean that the commander was arrested by the NKVD, much less executed. In those years, people were dismissed for health reasons, length of service, or due to transfer to another People's Commissariat. They were fired for drunkenness and moral decay - what, then there could not be alcoholics, polygamists in a commander's uniform? If one of the commanders accidentally died as a result of a domestic or work accident, should he not have been fired due to his death?
That certificate also contains information about those arrested by the NKVD - this one is closer to the topic. So, the authorities arrested 5,811 military personnel in 1937, and 5,057 in 1938. In total, 10,868 former military personnel were under investigation. One can, of course, say that arrests were made throughout 1938 and at the beginning of 1939... They were arrested, but with this calculation, the number of arrests did not reach the announced 40 thousand victims. And again the question is - were all the prisoners accused of “counter-revolutionary conspiracy and connections with bourgeois intelligence services”? Among them there were no commonplace murderers, rapists, embezzlers and thieves-quartermasters, persons who committed official crimes? True, in the certificate of 10,868 military personnel arrested by the NKVD, there is no distinction between who was imprisoned on a political charge and who on a criminal charge. Let’s take into account the “fashion of the times” and assume that two-thirds of all prisoners were “victims of unjustified repression.” These are 7,246 military personnel arrested in the “case” of Marshals Tukhachevsky-Blyukher-Egorov and other repressed elite. Obviously, this is in no way compatible with the loudly announced 40 thousand killed victims. And someone arrested and convicted is not always someone who has been shot. How many of the 10,868 arrested and convicted were subsequently “resurrected” and returned to the army? There is an archival answer to this question.
On May 5, 1940, Army Commissar 1st Rank Shchadenko signed the “Report of the Head of the Directorate for Command Staff of the Red Army of the People’s Commissariat of Defense.” The final line of the report: “Those unjustly dismissed have been returned to the army and navy. In total, as of May 1, 1940, there were 12,461 commanders of the army, air force and navy.” But the liberation and rehabilitation of the former military did not end there. It continued: they were released from prisons and Gulag camps and returned to duty in the second half of 1940, and throughout 1941. Pay attention to the indicated figures in the reports - the number of those reinstated in the army is greater than the number of those arrested by the NKVD. How to explain this? It’s very simple - they again called up those who were discharged “in civilian life”, but never took a sip of the prison gruel. Those who were interested in the biography of Soviet commanders of the Great Patriotic War know that Marshal Rokossovsky, Army General Gorbatov, Army General Sandalov, and hundreds of other Victory commanders had a “prison biography.”

Who suffered?

Statistics and archival documents prove that a very small group of high-echelon military leaders went under the ax: marshals, army commanders and commissars of the 1st and 2nd ranks, fleet flagships, heads of departments, district commanders. No more than a thousand people, including their immediate circle. The total number of command personnel of the Red Army and the Navy in 1937, by the way, was 206 thousand. In terms of numbers, the loss is insignificant. Maybe the problem is the quality of those repressed - they killed the most brilliant commanders?
By 1937, there were five marshals in the Soviet Union. But here’s an interesting fact: of these “magnificent five,” only one had a higher military education. The USSR at that time had the largest army on the planet. And here’s the strange thing: neither the Minister of War of the Soviet Union himself, nor his first deputy, nor the commander of the powerful Far Eastern Front, nor the chief marshal of the Soviet cavalry graduated from the “military academies”. And three out of five marshals did not study at any military educational institution (Budyonny, Blucher, Voroshilov). Yes, a genius does not need the title of professor and diplomas. But aren’t there too many “geniuses” crowded onto the Olympus of the Red Army? Below on the table of ranks were commanders of the 1st rank. Here Stalin’s accusers are completely disingenuous. They announce that there were five of them! But in reality, how? By 1937, there were not five 1st rank commanders on the lists, but eight. Three of the “unregistered” are the future Chief of the General Staff, Marshal Shaposhnikov, the future People's Commissar of Defense, Marshal Timoshenko, and the future Marshal Kulik. The NKVD did not touch them at all. But this trio did not fit into the spectacular cry - five of the five repressed army commanders, so the journalists “did not remember” them. The same trick applies to 2nd rank army commanders - they say that the “villain Stalin” allegedly killed all ten of them. There were a dozen of them, and two continued their army careers without any problems.

About tortured geniuses

Okay, let’s say it wasn’t 40 thousand commanders who were shot by the stupid villain Stalin, but 400. But the best of the best! Shall we check? Using the example of the Navy - the most intelligent branch of the military of that era.
The first fact is that in January 1937, all the commanders of the military fleets and flotillas of the USSR were in the past only coastal commissars of the civil war, professional political workers and party members, not one of them completed a full course at the naval school or naval academy. Fact two - in January 1940, all military fleets and flotillas of the USSR were headed by professionals, graduates of naval schools and academies who had experience in long voyages and ship service. Everyone knows that from the spring of 1939 and throughout the war, the USSR Navy was headed by Admiral Nikolai Kuznetsov. Everyone praises him. And there is a reason for it. But he took over the office of the People's Commissar of the Navy in place of the repressed... brilliant naval commander? Name?! 1st Rank Army Commander and People's Commissar of the Navy Frinovsky is Kuznetsov's predecessor. He had nothing to do with the navy, or even the army - a career security officer bore an army rank, and nothing more. This “land naval commander” with a KGB-criminal past does not fit into the “lives of repressed saints”, which is why this People’s Commissar of the Navy is not remembered. But he also took the place of two repressed, one after another, People's Commissars of the Navy. Two purebred commissar-political workers of the civil war, Pyotr Alexandrovich and Pyotr Ivanovich Smirnov (only the namesakes of the author of the article) disappeared in

The attitude towards the repressions in the ranks of the Red Army carried out by Joseph Stalin is still ambiguous. One side claims that Stalin “decapitated” the army, the other that “cleansing the army” brought benefits. We'll figure it out.

"Beheading" of the army

One of the theses often used today in political science rhetoric sounds like this: “Stalin, just before the war, “beheaded” the army, which is why there were such large losses in the first months of hostilities. The thesis is convincing in that among those repressed were very famous commanders who had gained glory back in the Civil War.
This thesis is also convincing because it is, by definition, irrefutable. History does not know the subjunctive mood, so it is not possible to either prove or disprove it.

With the question of Joseph Stalin’s “beheading” of the army, everything is also difficult because everyone who allows himself to doubt it automatically ends up as a “Stalinist.”
However, one can still doubt it. In addition, more than one scientific work has been written on this topic. Historian Gerasimov in his work “The Real Impact of the Repressions of 1937-1938. on the officer corps of the Red Army,” published in the “Russian Historical Journal” in 1999, writes that an analysis of the impact of repression on the main indicators of the condition of the command staff can refute the thesis of “decapitation.”

In 1937, 11,034 people were repressed, or 8% of the payroll of the commanding staff, in 1938 - 4,523 people, or 2.5%. At the same time, the shortage of command personnel in these years reached 34 thousand and 39 thousand, respectively, i.e. the share of those repressed in short-staffed command personnel was 32% and 11%.

In subsequent years, the shortage grew and amounted to 60 and 66 thousand in 1940 and 1941, respectively, but, as is known, there were no repressions in these years, but there was the deployment of the army, the creation of new formations that required more and more cadres of commanders and chiefs.

"Demon of the Revolution"

One of the “participants in the conspiracy” was Mikhail Tukhachevsky. His glorification during the Khrushchev era raises questions.

During the First World War, Tukhachevsky was captured. According to the unwritten rules of that time, if an officer in captivity gave his word of honor not to look for an opportunity to escape, he received more rights and could even go for a walk. Tukhachevsky gave his word, he ran away just during a walk. Such an “anachronism” as an officer’s honor had no meaning for Tukhachevsky.

Leon Trotsky called Tukhachevsky "the demon of the revolution." To earn such an “honorary” title from Lev Davidovich himself, one had to try hard.

Stalin called Tukhachevsky a “red militarist.” Mikhail Nikolaevich’s global plans in 1927 to produce 50-100 thousand tanks per year were not only unrealistic, but also disastrous for the industry, defense capability and economy of the USSR. Tukhachevsky himself seemed to have little understanding of what he was proposing. During the entire war, all countries combined could not reach 100 thousand per year. The Soviet Union did not manage to build even 30 thousand tanks in a year - for this, all factories (including purely peaceful ones) would have to be rebuilt to produce armored vehicles.

Industrialization in 1927 was still ahead, industry was semi-handicraft, approximately 5 million tons of steel were produced. If we assume that the weight of one tank of that time was 30 tons, then Tukhachevsky proposed to give half of the steel to tanks. Also, the “red militarist” proposed producing 40,000 aircraft per year, which was fraught with no less big problems for the country.

Let's get back to the tanks. Tukhachevsky proposed producing T-35 and T-28 tanks, which had become obsolete by the start of the war with Germany. If the USSR had thrown all its efforts into producing these machines, defeat in the war would have been inevitable.

Tukhachevsky planned a coup d'etat in 1937. Contrary to Khrushchev’s rhetoric, whitewashing Tukhachevsky, modern historians are unanimous in their verdict: a conspiracy really took place. We must give Tukhachevsky his due: he did not deny the accusations. It is interesting that the version of the forgery of the so-called “Beneš folder”, which allegedly misled Stalin, was confirmed by the memoirs of... Schellenberg. It turns out that Khrushchev based his theses about Tukhachevsky’s innocence on the memoirs of the SS brigadefuhrer.

Esprit de corps

When they talk about the problems of the army in the first year of the war, they invariably talk about the lack of qualified officers. However, if we check the numbers, we will see that there was no shortage. In 1941, the percentage of officers with an academic education was the highest in the entire interwar period, at 7.1%. In 1936, this figure was 6.6%.

The large number of officers without higher education is explained by the fact that reserve officers joined the officer corps.

Another figure is also interesting. If we compare the composition of the Red Army with other armies, it turns out that our army was the most saturated with command personnel. In 1939, there were 6 privates per 1st officer of the Red Army, 29 in the Wehrmacht, 15 in the British Army, 22 in the French Army, and 19 in the Japanese Army.

It must also be said that the repressions gave young officers a good “career lift.” 30-year-old military pilot Senior Lieutenant Ivan Proskurov became a brigade commander in less than a year, and a year later he headed the GRU with the rank of lieutenant general.

General Nemo

Unlike Tukhachevsky, who was known for his combat “exploits” using gas, very little is known about how Blucher “rose up”. He was called "General Nemo". According to one version, the landowner christened Vasily Blucher’s great-grandfather, a serf peasant who returned from the Crimean War with awards, Blucher in honor of Gerhard Lieberecht von Blucher. The nickname later turned into a surname. The Germans even recognized the first Marshal of the USSR as the captain of the Austro-Hungarian army, Count Ferdinand von Galen, who officially died on the Russian Front in 1915.
That is, it is not even clear who is in front of us, a defector or the great-grandson of a heroic peasant grandfather.

General Blucher fell out of favor with Stalin after conducting a not very successful military operation on the border with Japan. They began to accuse him of a defeatist position and sabotage. On July 31, 1938, the Japanese ousted Russian troops from the occupied territories. Only by concentrating colossal forces on the border, the Red Army managed to reach the line Stalin needed only by August 11. The operation was led personally by Blucher, suppressing Mehlis’s unprofessional attempts to command the troops. However, the losses of the Red Army still amounted to 950 people - a considerable number for such an operation.

For comparison, the Japanese army lost three times fewer soldiers.

Blucher was arrested and also charged with participation in an anti-government conspiracy, as well as an attempt at separatism - the separation of the Far East from the USSR. He was arrested and tortured.
Blucher admitted the charges, but was rehabilitated in 1956. During the 20th Congress, Khrushchev spoke about how Beria personally beat him, shouting: “Tell me how you sold the East.”

This explanation has found wide circulation both in our and German literature. A number of memoirs of both Soviet and German generals note a significant deterioration in the quality of the officers of the Red Army in the late thirties compared to the last decade, and the reason is also explained here - significant repressions in the Red Army of the generals and officers in the mid-thirties, as a result of which the army was left without quality officers. Moreover, the assessment, as a rule, is given on the basis of comparing the quality of the officers in the initial months of the war with impressions of the officers of the Red Army in the early twenties.

Firstly, there is always a huge difference between an officer who has combat experience and an officer who does not. At the end of the Civil War, there were quite a lot of commanders in the Red Army who gained combat experience and learned to control units during battles. But by 1941, there were very few such officers left in the army, if only because of their age.

Secondly, over the past 20 years, weapons, technical equipment, and hence combat tactics have changed dramatically. The battle has become much more complex, requiring much higher knowledge.

A decline in the quality of the officer corps, and a significant one, did take place. But it is worth paying attention to the fact that with a sharp and significant reduction in the Red Army at the end of the Civil War from 5.3 million people to 562 thousand, naturally the best officers were retained in the army.

However, in 1927 the size of the army increases to 610 thousand, in 1935 to 930 thousand, in 1938 to 3.5 million, by the beginning of the war - to 5 million. With such a rapid increase in the size of the army, especially in the late thirties the quality of the officer corps was bound to decline.

There are axioms that have been tested for decades in all armies of the world - a platoon commander of average quality can be trained from the moment a young man joins the army after 3-5 years, a company commander after 8-12 years, a battalion commander after 15-17 years, a regiment commander after 20- 25 years old. Plus, at the beginning of the war, a massive influx of reserve officers into the Red Army, who actually did not have any military knowledge and skills.

We should not forget that in the twenties and thirties the officer corps was dispersed among numerous territorial divisions, in which, apart from a small core in the form of officers, there were no personnel or equipment. In such divisions, officers, deprived of the opportunity to actually command their units, accumulate command experience, and undergo training, gradually degraded and lost their skills.

The German leadership took a completely different path. The 100,000-strong Reichswehr was practically turned into a kind of concentration of officer personnel. Soldiers, non-commissioned officers and officers, serving (12-20 years) in a few but normal full-fledged and full-fledged divisions, had the opportunity to receive equally complete combat training. Each of them received, accordingly, training sufficient to receive an officer rank in the future.

The mercenary nature of the army, given the enormous unemployment in Germany, made it possible to recruit the best personnel into the ranks of the Reichswehr. Since the end of the twenties, the Germans underwent hidden military training (and not just passed, but actually constantly served) in the ever-growing assault troops of the Nazi Party (SA), the National Socialist Motorized Mechanized Corps (NSMK), and the National Socialist Flying Corps (NSFK). Thus, Hitler’s decree of March 1935 on the creation of the Wehrmacht only legally consolidated what had actually existed for a long time. The rapid growth in the size of the Wehrmacht did not lead to a decrease in the quality of the German officer corps. And it can’t be said how fast this growth was.

Stalin had to bluff to a certain extent, creating the impression among Western countries that the Red Army was large, strong and its divisions were stationed on all borders.

As for the influence of repression in the army in the mid-thirties on the quality of the officer corps, it is clearly and many times exaggerated, if it had any effect at all. In numerous books by democratic historians one can find a detailed list of repressed officers from the rank of division commander to the rank of marshal of the Soviet Union.

We will never know whether the repressed Tukhachevsky, Blucher, Kork, Putna, Yakir, Uborevich and others had such talents. It is still incorrect to automatically classify them as military geniuses just because they were shot. In any case, the undoubtedly outstanding commanders of the Civil War who remained alive and in their posts (Budyonny, Voroshilov, Shaposhnikov, Timoshenko, Kulik) did not show any special talents during the Great Patriotic War. And the military leaders of the Civil War were of lower rank too. And there is no reason to assert that if Tukhachevsky, Blucher, Kork, Putna, Yakir, Uborevich had survived, the war for the USSR would have been victorious from the very beginning.

By the way, historians somehow ignore the fact that it was Tukhachevsky who made a gross operational mistake in the Soviet-Polish War of 1920, organizing the offensive of his Western Front in divergent directions. The result of that mistake was a severe defeat in the war and the conclusion of peace with Poland, under the terms of which we lost half of Ukraine and Belarus.

People's Commissar of Defense K.E. Voroshilov at the XVIII Congress of the CPSU (b) reported that 40 thousand officers were dismissed from the army in 1937-38. Dismissed, not shot or repressed! In 1937-38, 37 thousand were dismissed from the Ground Forces, 6 thousand from the Air Force, a total of 39 thousand. In relation to the total number of officers, this is only about 10%. Returned to the army in their previous ranks and positions in the period 1938-1940 were 11,200 and 900, respectively. A total of 12 thousand 100 people.

How many of those dismissed from the army were arrested? 9579 people How many officers were there in the Red Army at that time? I. Pykhalov in his book “The Great Slandered War,” referring to archival documents, writes that in March 1937 there were 206 thousand officers in the Red Army. Thus, 4.5 percent of officers were arrested. Could this affect the combat effectiveness of the Red Army? Hardly.

From a certificate from the head of the Directorate for Command and Command of the Red Army E.A. Shchadenko March 1940: in 36-37, 6.9% of the payroll was dismissed (this includes those who were dismissed due to arrest), in 38-39 - 2.3%.

Of course, behind each unit in these statistics there is someone’s tragic human fate, but the losses in the officer corps as a result of dismissals in the thirties were so small that they could not affect the combat effectiveness of the Red Army.

Especially if you consider that the number of 39 thousand dismissed officers also includes those dismissed due to age, illness, as a result of secondment to other people's commissariats, and due to professional unsuitability. Those. to a certain extent, many officers were fired, who still could not bring any benefit to the army.

For example, in the same year, 1937, among all those fired, 1,139 were dismissed for drunkenness and moral decay, 1,941 were dismissed for illness, disability, or age.

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 state’s officer corps in 1937-1938.

This accusation was also used by Khrushchev in his famous report “On the Cult of Personality.” In it, he personally accused Stalin of “suspicion,” his faith of “slander,” which is why numerous cadres of commanders and political workers were destroyed, down to the level of companies and battalions. According to him, Stalin destroyed almost all the personnel 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 left.

Second: Many of those repressed were “brilliant commanders” (for example, Tukhachevsky), and their liquidation caused enormous damage to the army and the country; they would have been useful in the Great Patriotic War and, perhaps, the disaster of the initial period would not have happened.

The question of the number of repressed officers

The figure most often mentioned is 40 thousand people; it was put into circulation by D. A. Volkogonov, and Volkogonov clarified that the number of those repressed includes not only those who were shot and imprisoned, but also those simply dismissed without consequences.

After him, a “flight of fantasy” began - the number of those repressed by L.A. Kirchner increases to 44 thousand, and he says that this was half the officer corps. The ideologist of the CPSU Central Committee, “foreman of perestroika” A. N. Yakovlev speaks of 70 thousand, and claims that everyone was 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% (6,692 people) were natural decline (dead, dismissed due to illness, disability, drunkenness, etc.), 27.2% (9,506) were arrested, 41, 9% (14,684) were dismissed for political reasons, 11.8% (4,138) were foreigners (Germans, Finns, Estonians, Poles, Lithuanians, etc.) dismissed according to the 1938 directive. 6,650 people were later reinstated and were able to prove that they had been fired unreasonably.

Quite a lot were fired for drunkenness; by order of the Commissioner of Defense of December 28, 1938, they were required to be expelled mercilessly. As a result, the figure of about 40 thousand turns out to be correct, but not everyone can be considered “victims.” If we exclude drunkards, those who died, those dismissed due to illness, and foreigners from the lists of repressed persons, then the scale of repression becomes significantly smaller. In 1937-1938 9,579 commanders were arrested, of which 1,457 were reinstated in rank in 1938-1939; 19,106 people were dismissed for political reasons, 9,247 people were reinstated.

The exact number of those repressed (and not all were shot) in 1937-1939 is 8,122 people and 9,859 people dismissed from the army.

Number of officer corps

Some talkers like to claim that the entire, or almost the entire, officer corps of the USSR was repressed. This is a blatant lie. They even provide figures for the lack 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 positions were created. In 1937, according to Voroshilov, there were 206 thousand command personnel in the army. By June 15, 1941, the number of command and control personnel of the army (excluding political personnel, Air Force, Navy, NKVD) was 439,143 people, or 85.2% of the staff.

The myth of “brilliant commanders”

It is clear that the shortage of officers was caused by a sharp increase in the size of the army; repressions had little impact on it.

According to the same Volkogonov, due to repression there was a sharp decrease in the intellectual potential of the army. He claims that by the beginning of 1941, only 7.1% of commanders had a higher education, 55.9% had a secondary education, 24.6% had completed command courses, and 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 secondary military education is explained by a significant influx of reserve officers into the army, from extra-conscripts who completed junior lieutenant courses, 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 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 start of the repressions, 29% of the senior command personnel had an academic education, in 1938 - 38%, in 1941 - 52%. If you look at the figures for those arrested and the military leaders appointed in their place, they indicate an increase in people with an academic education. In general, in 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 in their place did; Of the arrested heads of military districts, three had an “academy”; of the newly appointed ones, 8.

That is, the level of education of the high command only increased after the repressions.

There is another interesting aspect of the repressions of the “generals”: ​​the arrested Gamarnik, Primakov, Tukhachevsky, Fedko, Yakir, all except Tukhachevsky, who fought for several months before being captured, did not participate in the First World War. And Zhukov, Konev, Malinovsky, Budyonny, Malinovsky, Rokossovsky, Tolbukhin started it as simple soldiers. The first group occupied high positions, rather, for ideological reasons rather than military ones, while the second group slowly (remember Suvorov and Kutuzov) rose thanks to their talents and skills. They gained real experience in managing an army, going from the bottom to the top of their military career.

As a result, the “brilliant 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.

Sources:
Volkogonov D. A. Triumph and tragedy / Political portrait of J. V. Stalin. In 2 books. M., 1989.
The eve and beginning of the war: Documents and materials. Comp. L. A. Kirshner. L., 1991.
Pykhalov I. The Great Slandered War. M., 2006.
Rapoport V.N., Geller Yu.A. Treason to the Motherland. M., 1995.
Cherushev N. S. 1937: The Elite of the Red Army on Calvary. M., 2003.

Mass repressions of the late 30s significantly weakened the command and officer corps of the USSR Armed Forces; by the beginning of the war, approximately 70-75% of commanders and political instructors had been in their positions for no more than one year.

According to the calculations of modern war researchers, only for 1937-1938. Over 40 thousand commanders of the Red Army and the Soviet Navy were repressed, of which more than 9 thousand were senior and senior command personnel, i.e. approximately 60-70%.

It is enough to provide the following data to understand how the army command staff suffered [2, p. 104-106]:

Of the five marshals available by 1937, three were repressed (M.N. Tukhachevsky, A.I. Egorov, V.K. Blyukher), all were shot;

Of the four commanders of the 1st rank - four (I.F. Fedko, I.E. Yakir, I.P. Uboevich, I.P. Belov);

Of the two flagships of the fleet of 1st rank - both (M.V. Viktorov, V.M. Orlov);

Of the 12 commanders of the 2nd rank - all 12;

Out of 67 commanders - 60;

Of the 199 division commanders, 136 (including the head of the Academy of the General Staff D.A. Kuchinsky);

Out of 397 brigade commanders, 211.

Many other military leaders were under threat of arrest; incriminating material was collected on S.M. Budyonny, B.M. Shaposhnikova, D.G. Pavlova, S.K. Timoshenko and others, on the eve and at the very beginning of the war, the NKVD authorities arrested a group of prominent military leaders of the Red Army: K.A. Meretskov, P.V. Rychagov, G.M. Stern and others. With the exception of Meretskov, they were all shot in October 1941.

As a result, by the summer of 1941, among the command staff of the Red Army ground forces, only 4.3% of officers had a higher education, 36.5% had a secondary specialized education, 15.9% had no military education at all, and the remaining 43.3% had only completed short-term courses for junior lieutenants or were drafted into the army from the reserves

In modern history, the issue of repression in the Red Army is interpreted ambiguously. Most researchers believe that the repressions were carried out with the aim of strengthening Stalin’s personal power. Repressed military leaders were considered agents of Germany and other countries. For example, Tukhachevsky, who owes a lot to

L. Trotsky's career, was accused of treason, terrorism and military conspiracy, because he did not exalt the name of Stalin, and thus was a person disliked by him.

But on the other hand, Trotsky declared abroad that not everyone in the Red Army was loyal to Stalin, and it would be dangerous for the latter to leave his friend Tukhachevsky in the high command. The head of state dealt with them according to the laws of war.

W. Churchill notes: “The cleansing of the Russian army from pro-German elements caused heavy damage to its combat effectiveness,” but at the same time notes that

“a system of government based on terror can be strengthened by the ruthless and successful assertion of its power.”

Unlike Wehrmacht officers who had a special military education and received enormous experience in fighting the war of the Polish and French military companies of 1939-1940, and some officers also had experience of the First World War, our commanders in the overwhelming majority did not have it.

In addition, as noted earlier, the time of a possible attack on the USSR was incorrectly determined. Stalin was convinced that Hitler would not risk attacking the Soviet Union, waging a war on two fronts. Propaganda was carried out among the troops about the superiority of the communist system and the Red Army, and the soldiers became increasingly convinced of a quick victory over the enemy. For many ordinary soldiers, the war seemed like a “promenade.”

The deep conviction of the Red Army that its troops would fight only on foreign territory and with “little loss of blood” did not allow them to prepare in a timely manner to repel aggression.

In May 1940, a specially created commission headed by the Secretary of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks A.A. Zhdanov conducted an inspection of the People's Commissariat of Defense, as a result of which it was noted that the People's Commissariat did not know the true state of affairs in the army, did not have an operational plan for the war, and did not attach due importance to the combat training of soldiers.

The Red Army was left without battle-hardened, experienced commanders. The young cadres, although they were loyal to Stalin and the Soviet state, did not have the talent and proper experience. Experience had to be gained during the outbreak of war.

Thus, mass repressions created a difficult situation in the army, affected the fighting qualities of soldiers and officers, who turned out to be poorly prepared for a serious war, and weakened moral principles. In the order of the People's Commissar of Defense of the USSR dated December 28, 1938. “On the fight against drunkenness in the Red Army” it was said:

“... the tarnished honor of a Red Army soldier and the honor of the military unit to which you belong is of little concern to us.”

Headquarters also did not have the necessary experience, therefore there were serious miscalculations at the beginning of the war.