Widespread repression commanders Red Army. They began in the summer of 1937 after the execution of the defendants in the “Tukhachevsky case”: M. N. Tukhachevsky (shot), I. P. Uborevich (shot). Many of those who survived then became outstanding commanders and ... ... Wikipedia

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The attitude towards 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 the "purge of the army" was beneficial. We'll figure out.

"Decapitation" of the army

One of the theses often used today in political science rhetoric sounds like this: “Before the war, Stalin “decapitated” the army, so there were such heavy losses in the first months of hostilities. The thesis is convincing in that among the repressed were very famous commanders who acquired glory even in Civil.
This thesis is also convincing because it is, by definition, irrefutable. History does not know subjunctive mood, so it is not possible to prove or disprove it.

With the question of the "beheading" of the army by Joseph Stalin, everything is not easy, also because everyone who allows himself to doubt him automatically falls into the "Stalinists".
However, it is still possible to doubt. In addition, more than one has been written on this topic. scientific work. The 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 state of the command and command staff can refute the thesis of “beheading”.

In 1937, 11,034 people, or 8% of the payroll of the commanding staff, were repressed, 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 proportion of those repressed in the incomplete command staff was 32% and 11%.

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

"Demon of the Revolution"

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

In the First World War, Tukhachevsky was taken prisoner. According to the unwritten rules of that time, if an officer who was in captivity gave his word of honor not to look for an opportunity to escape, he received more rights, he could even go for a walk. Tukhachevsky gave such a word, he ran away just during a walk. Such "anachronism" as an officer's honor had no meaning for Tukhachevsky.

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

Stalin called Tukhachevsky a "red militarist". The global plans of Mikhail Nikolaevich in 1927 to produce 50-100 thousand tanks a year were not only unrealistic, but also disastrous for the industry, defense capability and economy of the USSR. Tukhachevsky, it seems, did not understand well what he proposed. Up to 100 thousand per year for the entire time of the war could not reach all the countries combined. The Soviet Union failed to build even 30 thousand tanks in a year - for this, all factories (including purely peaceful ones) would have to be rebuilt for the production of armored vehicles.

Industrialization in 1927 was still ahead, the industry was semi-artisanal, about 5 million tons of steel were smelted. If we assume that the weight of one tank of that time was 30 tons, then Tukhachevsky suggested that half of the steel be given to the tanks. Also, the "red militarist" proposed to produce 40,000 aircraft per year, which was fraught with at least big problems for the country.

Let's get back to the tanks. Tukhachevsky proposed to produce T-35 and T-28 tanks, which were obsolete by the beginning of the war with Germany. If the USSR threw all its forces into the production of these machines, defeat in the war would be inevitable.

Tukhachevsky planned coup d'état in 1937. Contrary to Khrushchev's rhetoric, whitewashing Tukhachevsky, modern historians are unanimous in their verdict: a conspiracy really took place. We must pay tribute to Tukhachevsky: he did not deny the accusations. It is interesting that the version with the forgery of the so-called "Benesh 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 Brigadeführer.

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 who had academic education, was the highest for the entire interwar period and amounted to 7.1%. In 1936 this figure was 6.6%.

A large number of officers without higher education is explained by the fact that reserve officers came to the officer corps.

Another number 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, and 19 in the Japanese.

It must also be said that the repressions gave young officers a good "career lift". A 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" with the use of gas, very little is known about how Blucher "rose". He was called "General Nemo". According to one version, great-grandfather Vasily Blucher - a serf who returned from Crimean War with awards, the landowner dubbed Blucher in honor of Gerhard Liberecht von Blucher. The nickname later turned into a surname. The Germans even recognized in the first marshal of the USSR 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 the heroic peasant grandfather.

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

For comparison, 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 - secession Far East from the USSR. He was arrested and tortured.
Blucher admitted the charges, but was rehabilitated in 1956. During the XX Congress, Khrushchev spoke about how Beria personally beat him, shouting: "Speak how the East sold."

This explanation has found wide circulation both in our and German literature. In a number of memoirs, both Soviet and German generals there is a significant deterioration in the quality of the officers of the Red Army at the end of the thirties compared with 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 high-quality officers. Moreover, the assessment, as a rule, is given on the basis of a comparison of the quality of the officer corps in the initial months of the war with the impressions of the officers of the Red Army in the early twenties.

First, there is always a huge difference between an officer who has combat experience and an officer who does not. At the end civil war in the Red Army there were quite a few commanders who received combat experience and learned how to manage 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 have changed dramatically, technical equipment, and hence the tactics of warfare. The battle has become much more complex, requiring much higher knowledge.

The decline in the quality of the officer corps, and a significant one, really took 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 left in the army.

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

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

Do not forget that in the twenties and thirties officers was scattered over numerous territorial divisions, in which, apart from a small core in the form of officers, there was neither personnel nor equipment. In such divisions, officers, deprived of the opportunity to really command their units, gain commanding experience, undergo training, gradually degraded and lost their skills.

The German leadership took a completely different path. The 100,000th Reichswehr was practically turned into a kind of concentrate of officer cadres. 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 an equally full-fledged combat training. Each of them received, accordingly, training sufficient to receive an officer's rank in the future.

The mercenary nature of the army, with huge unemployment in Germany, made it possible to recruit the best personnel into the ranks of the Reichswehr. Hidden since the late twenties military training the Germans passed (and not just passed, but actually constantly served) in the constantly growing assault squads Nazi Party(SA), National Socialist Motorized Mechanized Corps (NSMK), 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 of the Wehrmacht did not lead to a decrease in the quality of German officer corps. And even then say how fast this growth was.

Stalin, on the other hand, had to bluff to a certain extent, creating the impression Western countries that the Red Army is great, strong and its divisions are on all frontiers.

As for the influence of repressions in the army in the mid-thirties on the quality of the officer corps, it is clearly and repeatedly exaggerated, if at all. In numerous books of democratic historians, one can find a detailed listing of repressed officers by surname from the rank of division commander and the rank of marshal of the Soviet Union.

Whether the repressed Tukhachevsky, Blucher, Kork, Putna, Yakir, Uborevich and others possessed such talents, we will never know. To attribute them automatically to military geniuses just because they were shot is still incorrect. In any case, the survivors and at their posts undoubtedly prominent generals Civil War (Budyonny, Voroshilov, Shaposhnikov, Timoshenko, Kulik) special talents during the Great Patriotic War did not show. And the military leaders of the times of the Civil War are of a lower rank too. And there is no reason to assert that if Tukhachevsky, Blucher, Kork, Putna, Yakir, Uborevich had survived, then the war for the USSR would have been victorious from the very beginning.

By the way, somehow out of the attention of historians remains the fact that it was Tukhachevsky in Soviet-Polish war 1920 made a gross operational error by 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.

At the 18th Congress of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks, People's Commissar of Defense K.E. Voroshilov reported that 40,000 officers had been dismissed from the army in 1937-38. Dismissed, but not shot and not repressed! In the years 37-38, 37 thousand were fired 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, respectively, 11200 and 900. Total 12 thousand 100 people.

How many of those discharged from the army were arrested? 9579 people And 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 the officers were arrested. Could this affect the combat effectiveness of the Red Army? Hardly.

From the certificate of the head of the Department for command and command staff of the Red Army E.A. Shchadenko March 1940: in 36-37 years, 6.9% of the payroll were fired (this includes those who were fired in connection with the arrest), in 38-39 years - 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 layoffs in the thirties are so small that they could not affect the combat capability of the Red Army.

Especially when you consider that the 39,000 dismissed officers include those dismissed due to age, illness, as a result of secondment to other people's commissariats, and professional unsuitability. Those. to a certain extent, many officers were dismissed, who still could not bring any benefit in the army.

For example, in the same 1937, among all those dismissed, 1139 were dismissed for drunkenness and moral decay, 1941 on diseases, disability, age.

One of the most controversial and politicized issues in the history of the USSR is connected with repressions against the command staff of the Red Army in 1937. Without pretending to provide exhaustive answers to all of them, we suggest paying attention to some facts that shed additional light on complex events in the Red Army of the pre-war years.

Background

Since the “thaw”, the traditional set of views on the role of repression against the command staff of the Red Army is as follows:

• The Red Army by 1937 was one of the most powerful armies peace;
• its leaders were highly competent and dedicated commanders;
• repression dealt a severe blow to the army, and this largely explains the defeat of the beginning of the war.

To the question: “how many exactly were repressed?”, the figure of 40,000 people is often given, in addition, data are given on the number of repressed commanders higher ranks compared with total number(3 out of 5 marshals, etc.).

In the years of stagnation and further before perestroika, they tried not to raise the topic of repression. The emphasis in the causes of the defeats in 1941 was placed on the general "unpreparedness of the Red Army." At the same time, the author is not aware of any criticism of questions about the number of convicts or the scale of repression. The next round in the development of this topic began in perestroika, when the commanders who fell under the rink were again raised to the shield. Many documents were published, and such authors as Souvenir, and then Cherushev, began to be published. A peculiar response to the revealing publications was doubts in almost all the above assessments.

It seems that the odious publicist Vladimir Rezun, who wrote under the pseudonym V. Suvorov, was the first to say that “we were lied about everything” in his book “Suicide”. If the value of his opuses can be considered rather doubtful, then the studies of A. Smirnov (for example, the article “The Celebration of Showing” or the book “The Crash of 1941 - Repressions Have Nothing to Do With It! Did Stalin Behead the Red Army?”) are much more serious. It turned out that there were many problems in the Red Army even before the repressions. In addition, the percentage of repressed relative to the number of commanders of the entire Red Army was small, and many commanders were dismissed with wording that was different from political ones. Doubts were expressed about the competence of the red commanders - especially from various authors, Tukhachevsky got it.

Trying to figure out the true state of things will certainly be very difficult. But we'll try. The answer to the question about the impact of repression on the combat effectiveness of the Red Army includes answers to the following "sub-questions":

• What was the level of combat training of the Red Army before the repressions?
• What was the scale of the repression?
• Who replaced the repressed?
• What effects, besides the replacement of some commanders by others, did the repressions give?
• What was the level of training of the Red Army after the repressions?

In this article, we will deal with the first question from this list.

Acquisition

You should not judge the army of the 20-30s by modern army or Soviet army stagnation times. In the Soviet society of the 70s, an officer had a very high position. If you watch films of the 30s, it seems that in those years the red commander had a similar position. In fact, everything was far from so clear.

In the mid-1930s, the salary of a high school teacher was 750 rubles, and a platoon commander's salary was 600 rubles. These data are given by A. Isaev in the book "From Dubno to Rostov". At the same time, all the “charms” of command life did not go away: the need for frequent travel, the danger of service, and finally, the need to work hard not for 7 hours, like all the working people of the Soviet Union, but for 12-14 hours a day, practically without days off. reverse side it was, of course, career opportunities.

It should be borne in mind that getting money in the USSR, especially in the 1930s, was only the first stage in the struggle for the necessary goods. They still had to be bought, which was often in practice big problem. And here, as Osokin points out in his work “Behind the facade of Stalin's abundance”, the red commander had considerable advantages over other segments of the population. However, according to her own data, it is clear that the situation was the worse, the farther the duty station was from industrial and metropolitan areas. The commander, who did not serve there, practically did not have the opportunity to roll up to Moscow or Leningrad for shopping.

Of course, not everything for a person of the 30s was limited to material wealth, but it is naive to think that they did not mean anything. In addition, the heroes of that time were not only, for example, military pilots, but Stakhanov, Pasha Angelina and other completely civilian people.

"Stakhanov's crew" of the BA-6 armored car of the 2nd company of the 2nd battalion of the 18th Turkestan mountain cavalry division, awarded the Order of the Red Banner. TurkVO, 1936
topwar.ru

Thus, it is clear that purely material reasons with the recruitment of the Red Army there were very serious problems. Moreover, already political reasons access to the army was closed to military professionals from the category of "former" and seriously hampered for the children of the intelligentsia. The army was supposed to be a worker-peasant army, but rather it was just a peasant one. This is not surprising, because the majority of the population of that time were just plow and horse workers. Even in the biographies of most of the commanders of the Great Patriotic War, we will find indications that their ancestors were engaged in arable farming.

As a result - terrifying low level general education commanders. It should not be thought that the military does not need it at all. For example, the famous commander Panfilov division Momysh-Uly refused to accept the artillery battalion precisely because he was afraid that he would not be able to calculate his volley. True, this episode is described in fiction book « volokolamskoe highway”, however, it is written from the words of the protagonist and is quite accurate in other moments.

Supply

Of course, material problems pursued not only personnel Red Army - the whole country was in similar conditions. The level of poverty of the Red Army can be well assessed by the following example: in 1923, the deputy chairman of the Revolutionary Military Council (that is, the second person in the army!) Sklyansky dealt with the problem of an acute shortage of washcloths and handkerchiefs. The latter, for example, were supposed to deliver 596,405 pieces with headcount an army of 610,000 men. This example is taken from famous collection Reform in the Red Army. Documents and materials. With communications and other technology, the situation was not much better than with handkerchiefs.

Of course, it was 1923, the country was just recovering from the devastation of the Civil War. But material problems haunted the Red Army in the future. Poor, monotonous food, lack of uniforms and shoes, shooting ranges and classrooms, visual aids, living in emergency or simply worthless housing - all these are the rules, not exceptions for inspection acts of the 30s. These factors seriously affected the combat capability of the army. The military was largely concerned with their own survival and construction work.

Moreover, if in the mid-20s the size of the army changed slightly, remaining in the region of 600,000 people, then from the end of the 20s its ever-accelerating growth begins. Associated with him whole line problems. This is an increase in the need for commanders, and a sharp increase in the need for material supplies. One can criticize Blucher a thousand times for the collapse of combat training, for the fact that his troops did not get out of construction and out of orders, but how to ensure combat training if another unit is being transferred to the district, which has not only a shooting range and training classes, but even barracks?! And on the nose of winter with 40-degree frosts.

BT-7 on exercises. Wooden sleepers are laid on the fenders, often used for self-pulling and laying on soft ground. On the turret sheet lies a “candle” - a spare suspension spring. 1936
topwar.ru

At the same time, there is no unemployment in the USSR. Consequently, there are no "extra" people who could be painlessly directed to the construction of roads, barracks, airfields, shooting ranges, classrooms and sports campuses.

The problem of one-sided interpretation of documents

It would be a mistake to think that everything was bad in the Red Army by 1937. Both Smirnov and some other authors consider very specific kind documents: inspection reports, exercise reports, and so on. It is quite natural that in such documents Special attention turned to the negative points. And it is completely incorrect to choose only them from the documents. In fact, the reports paint a much more complex picture. For example, the autumn maneuvers of 1936 in the BVO criticized by Smirnov are characterized by the head of the Combat Training Department of the Red Army Sedyakin as follows:

« But their intelligence was not capable. 71-TK radios did not connect commanders and headquarters with anyone further than 4–5 km. Kombrig 21 mech. therefore acted blindly, on the shots. The interaction between mechanized brigades and combat aviation is weak. Also, 5 mb acted blindly ... Combat reconnaissance, observation, guarding on the move and on the spot - in disregard ... At the assembly points - the same carelessness and neglect of disguise. 5 mb and 21 mb stand near the forest, but completely open and disorderly in front of the edge .... On the attack battle formations quickly upset (5 mb).

However, the following lines can be found in the same document:

“Combat aircraft acted successfully. Red stormtroopers very well covered the way out of the battle of the 7th cavalry division ... Komdiv 37 comrade. KONEV, chief of staff - Colonel VORONTSOV and his staff tactically and technically know and understand defense well.

The defensive line was conceived and executed in kind tactically reasonable and witty - according to the forces and means of the division ...

Commendable:

1. Good work of the headquarters of the 37th division. A well-knit apparatus of proactively working staff commanders.
2. Well organized reconnaissance.

Major Sologub showed great energy and resourcefulness in organizing nightly reconnaissance searches and collecting information about the enemy. He himself personally went on these searches and personally interrogated the captured commanders. His main trophy is a combat order for the artillery regiment of the 2nd rifle division, containing information about the attack of the 16th rifle division, captured from the captured commander of the 1st artillery division "

In general, one can only choose negative feedback, as Smirnov does, but it is possible - only favorable ones, and due to this, on the basis of the same document, get polar assessments. And what conclusions are made in the document itself by its authors?

"one. Your task for maneuvers, Comrade Marshal of the Soviet Union, Commander of the Troops and the Headquarters of the BVO completed.

Design and general organization gave maneuvers great experience commanders, staffs and troops in a completely modern operational-tactical situation, the most interesting and rich in content.

2. The operational course of maneuvers is good both in the actions of the chiefs and headquarters, and in the work of the leadership.

1. The tactical content of all stages is instructive. Rich, testifying to the undoubted growth of tactical art and tactical training of commanders and staffs.
2. The tactical training of troops, especially a soldier, squad, platoon, vehicle, tank platoon, company does not satisfy me. …
3. Attack and defense are assimilated only on a large scale, in principle...
4. Link battalion - division for combat control prepared. It is necessary to complete the company-platoons "

“In all kinds of weapons, young fighters are mastering combat training. Machine gunners are trying to achieve sniper accuracy in shooting.
Photo from the album "Red Army" 1936

Extremely interesting assessment in the light of Smirnov's conclusions. Let me remind you that he claims that the maneuvers of 1936 were ostentatious, orchestrated. At the same time, he refers in his famous article"The triumph of window dressing" ... on the same Sedyakin. Indeed, Sedyakin pointed to bad job intermediary commanders who were supposed to decide the outcome of the training battles: whether the attack was successful or unsuccessful, what losses the unit suffered, and so on. But it is one thing - the shortcomings of the service of intermediaries, and quite another - orchestrated maneuvers. As is easy to see from the conclusion, Sedyakin did not consider them as such. The chief of staff of the BVO Bobrov echoes him in the report on the results of the exercises:

« Concerning the decisions of the Commander of the Reds (Apanasenko - approx. ed.) and Komkor 3 cav arose on maneuvers assumptions different from decision, namely:
Do not engage in battle 4 cd until 7 cd approaches and roll 10 and 21 MB through NEZHEVKA on the battlefield 4 cd, abandoning their flank position and a deeper bypass of the enemy.

Thus, the leadership of the maneuvers assumed other actions of the commander than he had taken from the very beginning. Therefore, the maneuvers were free, not orchestrated. The exercise reports do not mention the exponential nature of the exercise. The author of the article was completely unaware of such evidence until the arrest of Uborevich and other commanders from the leadership of the BVO. There is a suspicion that at that moment the principle of “falling - push” began to work, and the commanders who turned out to be “pests” began to pour mud on those who praised them yesterday.

« The teaching went well. There were no major shortcomings that the attaches could observe. There was a discrepancy with the given commander of the 18th rifle regiment. Colonel Comrade Romanov for a period of artillery preparation and preparation of troops for the attack, as a result of which the attack took place at 13.40 instead of 13.00, which led to the presence of advanced echelons prepared for the attack in the area of ​​​​strong machine-gun fire, more than it should. This was greatly complicated by the insufficient training of the fighters of the territorial division, which only started ter. training camps on 1.9 (the exercise was 9 - ed.). But these moments were largely hidden from the eyes of the attache, since at the most difficult moment of overcoming the crest of the line of military guards we fed them breakfast or drove them in cars.

... Although the remarks of the attache about the advance preparation of classes were not heard, nevertheless, by the nature of the excellent formulation of tasks and by the actions of the troops, they could notice that the commanders and troops were not going through such an exercise for the first time.

... Analysis by the division commander was general and did not note a single negative moment, except for the congestion of the battalion of the 2nd echelon, which was clearly observed by all, advancing when advancing from behind the left flank of the first echelon. This, to some extent, gave rise to the attaché's irony (Kunel "didn't say anything at all") that the analysis was general and consisted only of praise. There should have been 2-3 flaws general bring (I advised the division commander to do this) ... "

Smirnov also cites data on the results of firing, from which it follows that the troops did not know how to shoot at all. But this was not the case everywhere. Analysis of the statements of the results of inspector firing of units of the Kyiv Military District for 1936 academic year shows that the situation with fire training differed significantly from regiment to regiment. Yes, all three rifle regiments 95 rifle division the average marks for performing exercises for shooting from rifles, light and heavy machine guns, revolvers and throwing grenades were from 4 points on a five-point system and above. And, for example, in the 99th Infantry Division, two out of three regiments had average marks for various types shooting below the "troika".

Red Army snipers on exercises

It should be noted that just before 1937, another rather serious expansion army, which could not but affect the level of training. This can be illustrated with the following example. Back in 1934, in the Trans-Baikal Group of Forces (the future Trans-Baikal District), which traditionally lagged behind in combat training, the situation was assessed as follows:

“From 14 headquarters of rifle and cavalry regiments tested by special viewing exercises and maneuvers good mark received - 10 headquarters (71.5%), satisfactory - 3 headquarters (21.5%) and unsatisfactory - 1 headquarters (7%) ...

The headquarters of the battalions have grown as control apparatuses and in their work they have ceased to mechanically copy the methods of work of higher headquarters ... The offensive with tanks has been satisfactorily worked out. The infantry learned how to make quick throws by entire units behind tanks at a distance of up to 200 meters.

The overall rate of advance of the infantry with tanks has been increased to 4 km/h. The second echelons of the infantry do not lag behind, being able to alternate between walking and running for a timely entry into battle...

The technique of passing a mass of tanks through a dense battle formation of infantry during the offensive and attack has been mastered.

Obviously, even before the repressions of 1937, the Red Army had significant problems in combat training, which were associated with various objective reasons. In the next article, we will look at the scale of the repressions and how they affected the level of training of the Red Army.

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

Estimated modern researchers war only for 1937-1938. more than 40 thousand commanders of the Red Army and the Soviet Navy were repressed, of which more than 9 thousand people of higher and senior command staff, i.e. about 60-70%.

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

Of the five marshals available by 1937, three were repressed (M.N. Tukhachevsky, A.I. Egorov, V.K. Blucher), 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 the 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 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 the threat of arrest, compromising 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 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 ground forces of the Red Army, only 4.3% of the officers had higher education, 36.5% - secondary specialized, 15.9% did not have a military education at all, and the remaining 43.3% graduated only short courses junior lieutenants or were drafted into the army from the reserve

AT modern history the question of repression in the Red Army is interpreted ambiguously. Most researchers believe that the repressions were carried out in order to strengthen Stalin's personal power. The repressed military leaders were considered agents of Germany and other countries. For example, Tukhachevsky, who owes much to

L. Trotsky career, was accused of treason, terror and military conspiracy, because he did not exalt the name of Stalin, and thus, was an objectionable person to him.

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

W. Churchill notes: “The purge of the Russian army from pro-German elements caused severe damage to its combat capability,” 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 the officers of the Wehrmacht, who had a special military education and gained colossal experience in the war of the Polish and French military companies of 1939-1940, and some of the officers and the experience of the First World War, our commanders in the vast majority did not have such.

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 Soviet Union, waging a war on two fronts .. The troops carried out propaganda of the superiority of the communist system and the Red Army, the soldiers grew stronger quick victory over the enemy. For many ordinary warriors, the war seemed like a "walk".

The deep conviction of the composition of the Red Army that its troops would fight only on foreign territory and with "little bloodshed" did not allow timely preparations 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 by the People's Commissariat of Defense, as a result of which it was noted that the People's Commissariat did not know true position affairs in the army, did not have an operational plan for the war, did not attach due importance to the combat skills of soldiers.

The Red Army was left without battle-hardened experienced commanders. Young cadres, although they were devoted to Stalin and Soviet state but lacked the talent and experience. Experience had to be acquired in the outbreak of the war.

Thus, mass repression created a difficult situation in the army, influenced 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 of December 28, 1938 No. "On the fight against drunkenness in the Red Army" said:

"... the tarnished honor of a soldier of the Red Army and the honor of the military unit to which you belong, few people worry us"

Did not have necessary experience and the Headquarters, therefore, had serious miscalculations at the beginning of the war.