Execution of Tukhachevsky On June 11, 1937, in Moscow, the highest commanders and political workers of the Soviet Armed Forces, Tukhachevsky, Primakov, Yakir, Uborevich, Eideman and others were shot by a military tribunal on charges of organizing a “military-fascist conspiracy in the Red Army.”

During the execution, Tukhachevsky shouted: “Long live Stalin!” Today is the 120th anniversary of the birth of the legendary Soviet military leader. In the summer of 1964, the First Secretary of the Central Committee Nikita Khrushchev received a certificate from the party commission of the CPSU Central Committee on the verification of the charges brought in 1937 by judicial and party bodies against Mikhail Tukhachevsky. It is curious that this certificate, which for a long time was classified as “Top Secret”, in the nineties ended up in the collection “Military Archives of Russia”, issue 1. However, the “interested departments”, as I was told in the Russian State Archive of Socio-Political History, quickly they realized it, and the 50,000th circulation went under the knife. There are only a few copies of the book left, which, in addition to the document we mentioned, also contains materials that were no less closed from the February-March plenum of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks in 1937. On the title page of the report there is the inscription: “Strictly confidential. Store as a cipher. Making copies is prohibited." Let us, dear readers, turn the pages of this simple and terrible book... THE ARREST WAS PREPARED FOR SEVEN YEARS There is a misconception that the repressions against Red Army officers were prepared for a short time - from the mid-thirties. In fact, the intelligence work of Tukhachevsky and other military leaders began back in 1924. In the KGB archives, a special commission discovered the so-called “General Staff” case, in which 350 “unreliable” people were involved. For the most part, compromising evidence on Tukhachevsky was compiled by full-time NKVD agents, distributed by them, and then returned to this organization as “agent reports” from third parties. The first accusation against Tukhachevsky was recorded in December 1925. Agent Ovsyannikov wrote about the “Bonapartism” of the military. And here is what agent Zayonchkovskaya wrote: “In 1929, the German correspondent Gerbing told us that Kamenev S.S. (former general of the tsarist army - Author) and Tukhachevsky M.N., separately from each other, were working in favor of Germany on orders from the German General Staff." This and similar messages that accumulated in the NKVD served as the basis for the first wave of repressions against old-school specialists. As part of the "Spring" case, in 1930 - 1932, more than 3,000 officers and generals of the tsarist army who served in the Red Army were arrested. Thus, Tukhachevsky could have been arrested in the fall of 1930. In September, Stalin received a report from the chairman of the OGPU, Vyacheslav Menzhinsky, to which he attached interrogation protocols in the “Spring” case. And Stalin writes a letter to his comrade-in-arms Sergo Ordzhonikidze: “Read the testimony of Kokurin-Troitsky as soon as possible and think about measures to eliminate this unpleasant matter. This material, as you see, is strictly secret: Molotov knows about it, and now you will know too... Therefore, Tukhachevsky was captured by anti-Soviet elements and was purely processed by anti-Soviet elements from the ranks of the right... Is this possible? Of course, it is possible, since it is not excluded... It is impossible to end this matter in the usual way (immediate arrest, etc.). We need to think carefully about this matter.” Tukhachevsky’s “immediate arrest” took place only seven years later, in the spring of 1937.

Tukhachevsky was one of the youngest and most promising leaders of the Red Army. Photo: RIA NOVOSTI “HE MAY NOT RETURN FROM LONDON” The February-March plenum of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks in 1937 was not the beginning of repressions against senior officers, but only a continuation. But Tukhachevsky’s fate was most likely decided earlier, back in January. The certificate of the Central Committee of the CPSU states that by 1937, “the false intelligence and investigative material available there was collected from the archives of the NKVD, and various kinds of fables began to quickly spread around the name of Tukhachevsky.” In addition, a letter was sent to the “chief security officer” from the former head of the foreign department of the NKVD of the USSR, Artur Artuzov. He, “referring to information from overseas agents available in the archives about the allegedly sabotage activities of Tukhachevsky, expressed his opinion about the existence of a Trotskyist organization in the Red Army.” By the way, the “confession” did not help Artuzov himself - he was arrested 10 days before Tukhachevsky. Of course, the marshal felt that the ring around him was shrinking. For example, in the spring of 1937 he was not allowed to attend the coronation of King George VI. Reason: allegedly a terrorist attack is being prepared there against Tukhachevsky. This “concern” was explained simply: his comrades suspected that the “secret carrier” from London might not return... A MARSHAL IN A SUIT AND LOGS... Soon the military man received a more serious “signal”. On May 10, 1937, at the instigation of Voroshilov, Tukhachevsky was relieved of his duties as deputy people's commissar of defense and appointed commander of the Volga Military District. Nine days before his arrest, Stalin personally received Tukhachevsky in the Kremlin. The Commission of the CPSU Central Committee did not find any materials about the substance of the conversation between the Secretary General and the Marshal. There is only one clue. Testimony of the old Bolshevik Nikolai Kulyabko, who back in 1918 gave Tukhachevsky a recommendation to join the party: “Tukhachevsky explained to Kulyabko that the reason for his transfer to Kuibyshev, as reported in the Central Committee of the party, was the fact that his friend Kuzmina and former guarantor turned out to be spies and were arrested.” The marshal was packing his things, and at that time they were extracting testimony against him from the already arrested military men. Investigator Ushakov, who led the case of the deputy commander of the Moscow Military District Boris Feldman, wrote: “By the evening of May 19, Feldman wrote in my name a well-known testimony about a military conspiracy involving Tukhachevsky, Yakir, Eideman and others, on the basis of which a decision was made on May 21 or 22 Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks about the arrest of Tukhachevsky and a number of others.” The marshal was arrested in Kuibyshev on May 22, and three days later he was taken to the internal prison of the NKVD of the USSR, where he was kept under number 94. The Commission of the CPSU Central Committee did not find the protocols of his initial interrogations in the materials of Tukhachevsky’s case. Perhaps they were simply destroyed, since the marshal most likely initially denied his guilt. But the resistance was “extremely short-lived.” Already on May 26, he admitted that he headed an “anti-Soviet military-Trotskyist conspiracy.” There are testimonies from former NKVD employees about how investigators sought such testimony. A certain Vul reported in 1956: “I personally saw Tukhachevsky in the corridor of house 2, he was dressed in a beautiful gray civilian suit, and over it was a prisoner’s coat made of overcoat cloth, and on his feet were bast shoes. As I understand it, Tukhachevsky was wearing such a suit to humiliate him. The entire investigation... was completed quickly... In addition to physical coercion measures, the persuasion of the investigators played a certain role in obtaining evidence.” In 1956, Tukhachevsky’s case with brown spots was submitted to the Central Forensic Laboratory for research. The conclusions were clear: it was blood... The trial of Tukhachevsky and other arrested military men took place on June 11, 1937. On this day, Stalin sent the following instructions to the republics, territories and regions: “In connection with the ongoing trial of spies and saboteurs by Tukhachevsky... and others, the Central Committee proposes organizing rallies of workers... as well as... Red Army units and passing a resolution on the need to use capital measures of repression. The trial is supposed to end tonight. The announcement of the verdict will be published tomorrow, i.e. on the twelfth of June. 11.VI.1937 Secretary of the Central Committee Stalin.”

In July 1936, the former tsarist general Skoblin, who was working at that time for German intelligence, transmitted two sensational messages to Berlin: a conspiracy against Stalin was brewing among the leadership of the Red Army, led by Deputy People's Commissar of Defense Mikhail Tukhachevsky; the conspirators are in contact with leading generals of the German High Command and the German intelligence service.

SS Security Chief Heydrich ordered his agents to secretly penetrate the secret archives of the Wehrmacht High Command and copy the dossier on Tukhachevsky. This dossier contained documents from the special department "K" - a camouflaged organization of the Reichswehr that dealt with the production of weapons and ammunition prohibited by the Treaty of Versailles. The dossier contained recordings of conversations between German officers and representatives of the Soviet command, including protocols of negotiations with Tukhachevsky. These documents began an operation codenamed “The Conspiracy of General Turguev” (the pseudonym of Tukhachevsky, under which he came to Germany with an official military delegation in the early 30s of the last century), as a result of which, according to some historians, a massive purge was provoked in the Red Army on the eve of World War II. In particular, on June 11, 1937, the “main conspirator” Marshal Tukhachevsky was shot.

Different versions

Over the 75 years that have passed since then, dozens of different versions of the conspiracy have been put forward. In my opinion, three are the most reliable.

According to the version most widespread in the West, Stalin was a victim of a provocation by the secret services of Nazi Germany, who planted fabricated documents about a “conspiracy in the Red Army.” It is assumed that Heydrich ordered the falsification of the dossier received by the Wehrmacht on Tukhachevsky (Turguev): additional phrases were included in the recordings of conversations and correspondence, new letters and notes were added, so that in the end a solid dossier with “authentic” documents and seals was obtained, quite convincing, to hand over any general in any country to a military tribunal on charges of treason.

Here, the only thing that can be considered reliable and conclusive is that in mid-May 1937, a dossier on Tukhachevsky actually appeared on Stalin’s desk, which, as a result of a specially organized (or unauthorized) leak of information from Hitler’s intelligence services, became the property of first the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Czechoslovakia, and then the USSR . It, in particular, contained recordings of conversations between German officers and representatives of the Soviet command, including Tukhachevsky. And also a letter from Tukhachevsky to like-minded Germans, which spoke of the desire to get rid of the tutelage of the party apparatus and seize state power into their own hands. Supporters of this version believe that the dossier was slipped to Stalin as a result of a very subtle operation by Hitler’s secret services. Goal: to provoke him into mass repression among officers.

Another version was formulated in the Western press back in 1937: a military conspiracy really existed, but it was directed not against Soviet power, but personally against Stalin.

I had a chance to familiarize myself with Tukhachevsky’s criminal case, but there was no serious evidence of the anti-Stalinist version there. The marshal's first written statement after the arrest was dated May 26, 1937. He wrote to the People's Commissar of Internal Affairs Yezhov: “Having been arrested on May 22, arriving in Moscow on the 24th, first interrogated on the 25th, and today, May 26, I declare that I recognize the existence of an anti-Soviet military-Trotskyist conspiracy and that I was at its head. I undertake to independently present to the investigation everything concerning the conspiracy, without concealing any of its participants, not a single fact or document. The foundation of the conspiracy dates back to 1932. The following people took part in it: Feldman, Alafuzov, Primakov, Putna, etc., which I will show in detail later.”

During interrogation by the People's Commissar of Internal Affairs, Tukhachevsky said: “Back in 1928, I was drawn into a right-wing organization by Yenukidze. In 1934 I personally contacted Bukharin; I established espionage connections with the Germans since 1925, when I traveled to Germany for exercises and maneuvers... During a trip to London in 1936, Putna arranged a meeting for me with Sedov (the son of L.D. Trotsky - S.T.)..."

I do not set out to answer the question of what Tukhachevsky wrote and said sincerely, and what was “beat out” from him in the NKVD. It's about something else. In his evidence there is no hint of the anti-Stalinist nature of the conspiracy, imaginary or actually taking place.

The third version to some extent combines the previous ones, but puts Stalin’s treachery at the forefront. In accordance with it, the dossier on Tukhachevsky was born within the walls of the NKVD and was planted on the German special services in the hope that they, interested in “decapitating” the Red Army, would play along with Stalin and help him deal with the Trotskyist fifth column in the army before the hardest war.

“Case” against a tsarist officer

The Soviet government, one might say, never had complete confidence in Tukhachevsky. Former nobleman, former officer of the tsarist guard, captured by the Germans

During the First World War, having easily switched to the side of the Bolsheviks after the revolution, he did not enjoy respect among the workers and peasants. Security officers began conducting “observation proceedings” against Tukhachevsky back in 1922. The testimony of two officers who served in the tsarist army in the past dates back to this time. They named... Tukhachevsky as the inspirer of their anti-Soviet activities. Copies of the interrogation protocols were reported to Stalin, who sent them to Ordzhonikidze with the following meaningful note: “Please read. Since it is not impossible, it is possible.” Ordzhonikidze’s reaction is unknown, but most likely he hushed up the matter. In another case, the secretary of the party committee of the Western Military District complained to the People's Commissariat for Military and Naval Affairs about Tukhachevsky (wrong attitude towards communists, immoral behavior). But People’s Commissar M. Frunze imposed a resolution on the information: “The party believed comrade. Tukhachevsky, believes and will continue to believe.”

One can only guess on what this belief was based. If we objectively evaluate Tukhachevsky’s military talents, then we must say that they were not as great as is sometimes believed. As a commander, he completely lost the battle to the legendary General Kappel and mediocrely squandered the Polish campaign. But he showed himself to be a cruel and ruthless pacifier of anti-Soviet riots - he drowned the Tambov uprising in peasant blood, and pacified the Kronstadt rebellion with fire and lead. Perhaps such “devotion” to the cause of the revolution for representatives of the “Leninist guard” was the main proof of Tukhachevsky’s loyalty.

However, judging by some documents, Stalin did not really believe in this military expert. In the personal archive of Kliment Voroshilov, I happened to make a photocopy of the leader’s letter to the People’s Commissar of Defense. Then, in the Krasnaya Zvezda newspaper, the totalitarian regime, suffering from a lack of publicity, held an open discussion about how to carry out reform of the Armed Forces. In particular, as history has now shown, the false ideas expressed in Tukhachevsky’s article received indignant responses. Stalin followed the discussion. And he expressed his opinion to Voroshilov. This is the letter.

“Owl. secret

Comrade VOROSHILOV

Klim, you know that I have great respect for Comrade Tukh-go as an unusually capable comrade. But I did not expect that a Marxist, who should not be divorced from the ground, could defend such a fantastic “plan” cut off from the ground (the creation of an 11-million army - S.T.). There is no main thing in his “plan”, i.e. there is no consideration of real economic, financial, cultural possibilities. This “plan” fundamentally violates every conceivable and acceptable proportion between the army, as part of the country, and the country, as a whole, with its economic and cultural limits. The “plan” is confused by the point of view of “purely military” people, who often forget that the army is a derivative of the economic and cultural state of the country.

To “implement” such a “plan” would certainly mean ruining both the country’s economy and the army. This would be worse than any counter-revolution.

It is gratifying that the Headquarters of the Red Army, despite all the danger of temptation, clearly and definitely dissociated itself from the “plan” of Comrade Tuch-go.

Yours I. STALIN."

But I don’t think that such “mistakes” by Tukhachevsky could have cost him his life. There is probably a more compelling reason. Today it has already been documented that emigrant circles and the “internal” opposition “looked closely” at Tukhachevsky as a possible Bonaparte, capable of breaking the neck of the “leader of the peoples.” It can be assumed that Stalin did not wait for the situation to develop along this hypothetical course. He removed Tukhachevsky, and with him the military Trotskyist opposition.

What came of it

Despite the fact that, as everyone knows, history does not warm to the subjunctive mood, some modern analysts argue: if not for the pre-war purges in the army, we would have defeated fascism with less bloodshed. I don’t dare to speculate on this topic. I will only cite the opinions of our enemies on this matter, for whom there was no reason to whitewash Stalin.

For example, in his speech in October 1943, Reichsführer SS Himmler stated: “When large show trials were going on in Moscow, and the former Tsarist cadet, and subsequently the Bolshevik General Tukhachevsky and other generals, were executed, all of us in Europe, including us, members Party and SS, were of the opinion that the Bolshevik system and Stalin made one of their biggest mistakes here. By assessing the situation this way, we greatly deceived ourselves. We can state this truthfully and confidently. I believe that Russia would not have survived all these two years of war - and now it is already in its third - if it had retained the former tsarist generals.”

The diary entry of the Minister of Propaganda of Nazi Germany Goebbels dated May 8, 1943 is very eloquent: “There was a conference of Reichsleiter and Gauleiter... The Fuhrer remembered the incident with Tukhachevsky and expressed the opinion that we were completely wrong when we believed that in this way Stalin would destroy the Red Army. The opposite was true: Stalin got rid of the opposition in the Red Army and thus put an end to defeatism.”

From the joint venture dossier

On March 5, 1921, Tukhachevsky was appointed commander of the 7th Army, aimed at suppressing the uprising of the Kronstadt garrison. By March 18, the uprising was suppressed.

In 1921, the RSFSR was engulfed in anti-Soviet uprisings, the largest of which in European Russia was a peasant uprising in the Tambov province. Considering the Tambov rebellion as a serious danger, the Politburo of the Central Committee in early May 1921 appointed Tukhachevsky commander of the troops of the Tambov district with the task of completely suppressing it as soon as possible. According to the plan developed by Tukhachevsky, the uprising was largely suppressed by the end of July 1921.

I ORDER:

1. Clean the forests where the bandits are hiding with poisonous gases, accurately calculate so that the cloud of suffocating gases spreads throughout the forest, destroying everything that was hidden in it.

2. The artillery inspector should immediately provide the required number of cylinders with poisonous gases and the necessary specialists to the field.

3. The commander of combat areas must persistently and energetically carry out this order.

4. Report the measures taken.

Commander of the troops Tukhachevsky,

Chief of Staff Kakurin.

The experience of the first combat site shows great suitability for quickly clearing known areas of banditry using the following cleaning method. The most gangster-minded volosts are identified, and representatives of the political commission, special department, RVT department and command go there, along with units assigned to carry out the purge. Upon arrival at the place, the volost is cordoned off, 60 - 100 of the most prominent hostages are taken and a state of siege is introduced. Exit and entry from the volost must be prohibited during the operation. After this, a full volost meeting is convened, at which the orders and the written verdict for this volost are read. Residents are given a two-hour period to hand over bandits and weapons, as well as bandit families, and the population is informed that if they refuse to give the information mentioned, the hostages taken will be shot in two hours. If the population has not identified the bandits and has not given up weapons after the 2-hour period has passed, the gathering is held a second time and the taken hostages are shot in front of the population, after which new hostages are taken and those gathered at the gathering are again asked to hand over the bandits and weapons. Those who want to do this stand separately, are divided into hundreds, and each hundred is passed through for questioning through a polling commission [of] representatives of the special department of the RVT. Everyone must testify without making excuses of ignorance. In case of persistence, new executions are carried out, etc. Based on the development of material obtained from surveys, expeditionary detachments are created with the obligatory participation in them of the persons who provided information and other local residents, [who] are sent to catch the bandits. At the end of the purge, the state of siege is lifted, the Revolution is established, and the militia is installed.

Chairman of the Plenipotentiary Commission of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee Antonov-Ovseenko

Commander of the troops Tukhachevsky

The defeated gangs hide in the forests and take out their impotent anger on the local population, burning bridges, damaging dams and other national property. In order to protect the bridges, the Polnikom of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee orders: 1. Immediately take at least five hostages from the population of villages near which important bridges are located, who should be immediately shot if the bridge is damaged. 2. Local residents, under the leadership of the revolutionary committees, organize the defense of bridges from bandit raids, and also make the population obligated to repair destroyed bridges no later than within 24 hours. 3. This order should be widely distributed throughout all villages and villages.

Pre-Regimental Committee of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee Antonov-Ovseenko

Commandtroops Tukhachevsky

Stalin shot Mikhail Tukhachevsky and other Red commanders not for preparing a coup, but for cutting the defense budget
In 1937, STALIN began a global purge of the army.
If we talk only about the top, then out of 85 leaders of the army and navy who were members of the supreme council under the People's Commissariat of Defense, only six people were not affected by repression.
Three of the five Soviet marshals were shot - Mikhail TUKHACHEVSKY, Vasily BLUCHER, Alexander EGOROV.
For some reason, it is believed that they all suffered innocently, and also because of the loss of these great commanders, our troops had to retreat all the way to Moscow in 1941...

When marshals Semyon BUDENNY, Vasily BLUKHER, Mikhail TUKHACHEVSKY, Klim VOROSHILOV, Alexander EGOROV did not find a common language, STALIN decided to shoot three of them

The myth about the brilliant commander Mikhail Tukhachevsky and others who suffered from the purges of the brilliant “division commander Kotovs” appeared in the USSR after the 20th Congress of the CPSU, as part of Khrushchev’s criticism of the cult of personality. Nikita Sergeevich tried to contrast Stalin’s supposed military genius with his guilt for the repression of 40 thousand officers. With them, Hitler, they say... would have been defeated already in 1942.

In fact, Stalin did not bleed the army, but renewed it.

The militarization of the USSR proceeded at an unprecedented pace. Despite the repressions, the officer corps almost tripled from 1937 to 1940! The number of officers with higher and secondary education increased from 164 thousand to 385 thousand people. Of course, these were newly minted personnel who had not yet been properly tested.

But the upcoming war was also completely different from the First World War. Old knowledge and techniques still did not help there.

“The gigantic purge among the military has misled our political intelligence. She was convinced that we had achieved a decisive success, and Hitler shared the same opinion. However, the Red Army, contrary to general opinion, was not weakened, but strengthened... The posts of repressed commanders of armies, corps, divisions, brigades, regiments and battalions were taken by young officers - ideological communists. After the total purge of 1937, a new Russian army emerged, capable of enduring the most brutal battles. Russian generals carried out orders, and did not engage in conspiracies and betrayal, as often happened in our highest positions.”

According to the official version, the reason for the brutal purges in the Red Army is the uncovered conspiracy against Stalin. But this is a very strong simplification. The struggle between several military clans was not against Stalin, but for proximity to his body.

At that time, the USSR was undergoing a large-scale rearmament of the army.

A military-industrial complex was created, which later became the economic basis of the country. The army command understood its significance perfectly and fought for the right to control financial flows.

It was at this crossroads that the interests of Deputy People's Commissar of Defense for Armaments Mikhail Tukhachevsky and People's Commissar Kliment Voroshilov collided.

Both marshals were far from technology and raced to grab onto any invention that seemed ingenious to them.

For example, a certain inventor Baranov proposed adopting an electromagnetic installation for catching projectiles. The essence of the mechanism was that several super-powerful magnets were installed around our battery, which deflected enemy shells to the side, and the battery became invulnerable.

Academician Abram Ioffe then proposed the “Death Rays” installation, which was supposed to fatally infect people with radiation at a distance of 400 meters from our trenches.

Tukhachevsky took up the promotion of magnets, and Voroshilov took up the rays.

It took both of them three years to understand the impossibility of their projects.
One can only guess how much time and millions of rubles were spent on such idiotic undertakings, since most similar projects are stored in archives under the heading “top secret.”

The head of the Ostekhburo, Vladimir BEKAURI, promised to create radio-controlled weapons for the Red Army. After spending a lot of time and money, the inventor admitted that he couldn’t do anything...

The black hole of the defense budget under these marshals was their favorite brainchild, the “Special Technical Bureau for Military Inventions for Special Purposes” by engineer Vladimir Bekauri.

Proposing to wage war exclusively with radio-controlled tanks, ships and aircraft, he was far ahead of his time, but technical means did not allow his “brilliant” ideas to be realized.

Under the leadership of Bekauri, the design of radio-controlled motorized armored cars "Hurricane" began. The car was supposed to break into the location of enemy troops and release several hundred kilograms of a strong toxic substance. In 1936, they tested the TT-TU telemechanical tank, designed for a high-speed approach to enemy fortifications and dropping a demolition charge. However, nothing from the creations of the Ostekhbyuro was accepted into service, since the radio control constantly failed, and boats, tanks, and planes began to behave completely unpredictably. The only project that can be called half successful is the miniature, 16 meters long and 2.62 meters wide, Pygmy submarine. The leadership of the Red Army Navy asked to convert it from radio-controlled to conventional and decided to adopt it for service. During the reconstruction process, it turned out that it was impossible to properly accommodate the crew there, which infuriated Stalin.

Bekauri was arrested. In the basements of the Lubyanka, he admitted that all these years he had been engaged in “fraud,” and his activities were personally covered up by Tukhachevsky and Voroshilov.

At the same time, Tukhachevsky began to actively criticize Voroshilov and his circle. It got to the point that he raised the question of replacing Voroshilov as People's Commissar of Defense as an incompetent leader. There was a clear split in the army. Stalin urgently needed to make a choice between two military clans. And he decided to appoint Marshal Tukhachevsky and his team as German spies.

...for example, the miniature submarine Pygmy could dive, but could not surface

Blucher refused to fight the Japanese

The second to be shot was Marshal Vasily Blucher. A rare case in the era of Stalin’s purges, when all points of the sentence, including “Japanese intelligence agent,” were practically true.

In the 1930s, the smell of a new world war was in the air. Among those who were preparing to take an active part in the next redistribution of the world was Japan, which already had the experience of defeating the Russian army in 1905. They had to find out whether their western neighbor had learned to fight or not. To test the strength of Soviet borders, a section of the border near Lake Khasan was chosen.

By that time, Blucher had been commanding the Far Eastern Front for many years.

Legendary hero of the Civil War, first holder of the Order of the Red Banner and Red Star,

Feeling like the sole ruler of a vast region, he got used to a calm and comfortable life away from the Moscow authorities. As they said then, he had become morally corrupt..., and in modern times he has generally become an ordinary pedophile...

- The hero of the Civil War became addicted to copious libations in the company of sycophants and hangers-on. In 1932, having reached his fifties, he married for the third time. His chosen one was a 17-year-old girl, Glafira Bezverkhova. However, this fact in itself was not particularly reprehensible - the main thing was that the assigned work should not suffer. And in this case it suffered,

- says historian and publicist Igor Pykhalov. -

During his nine years of command, Blucher never bothered to build a road along the Trans-Siberian Railway, which made the supply of troops very vulnerable.

On the morning of June 13, 1938, the head of the NKVD department for the Far Eastern Territory, Genrikh Lyushkov, ran over to the Japanese. The security officer managed to carry two bags of operational maps and other secret documents across the border. The Japanese gained access to virtually all Soviet military secrets in the Far East. Two days later, Japanese Charge d'Affaires to the USSR Nishi officially demanded the withdrawal of Soviet border guards from the heights in the Lake Khasan area and the transfer of territory to the Japanese.

People's Commissar of Defense Voroshilov immediately issued a directive to bring the Far Eastern Front to combat readiness. However, this turn of events did not at all arouse enthusiasm from Blucher. Secretly from Moscow, he began negotiations with the Japanese, where he asked them to find a way to resolve the conflict peacefully.

Meanwhile, two Japanese companies attacked our border post. During a fierce battle, they managed to capture the Bezymyannaya height.

The time when it was possible to repel the enemy’s advance on the move was lost, but it was too late to attack head-on. The assault failed. All the slopes of the heights and the shores of the lake were covered with the bodies of our soldiers. Only on August 6, having brought up additional forces, Soviet troops launched a decisive offensive and by August 9 cleared our territory of the Japanese, says Pykhalov. - Analyzing the course of military operations, it should be noted that Soviet troops advanced to the border on combat alert completely unprepared. A number of artillery batteries found themselves in the combat zone without shells, spare barrels for machine guns were not fitted, rifles were issued unfired, and many soldiers arrived at the front without rifles at all.

As a result, the Soviet side lost 960 people killed, died from wounds and went missing, and 3,279 people were wounded and sick. Japanese losses were 650 killed and about 2,500 wounded. Considering that the Soviet troops used aircraft and tanks, while the Japanese did not, the loss ratio should have been completely different.

The Soviet people, of course, were announced about the brilliant and unconditional victory of the Red Army. Only this news was not at all consistent with the arrest of Blucher and the report of his execution. Although most historians are sure that the marshal was beaten to death during the investigation.

From the point of view of the Japanese command, reconnaissance in force was successful. It turned out that the Russians were still fighting poorly, even in conditions of numerical and technical superiority. The consequences of the collision at Lake Khasan were much more severe than it seems, Pykhalov believes. - People around the world openly laughed at the Soviet Army. Japanese intelligence reports about the more than weak coordination of Soviet troops were transmitted to Germany and played a very important role in the decision to wage war against the USSR.

The incompetent command of BLUCHER during the border battles with the Japanese showed the Germans that the USSR would be easy prey for them

Egorov asked permission to shoot his wife...

The execution of Marshal Alexander Egorov on February 23, 1939 put an end to the repressions. The formal reason for his arrest is considered to be a statement by Georgy Zhukov to People's Commissar Voroshilov. Zhukov writes: “In November 1917... I heard a speech by the then right-wing Socialist-Revolutionary, Lieutenant Colonel A. I. Yegorov, who in his speech called Comrade Lenin an adventurer, an envoy of the Germans.”

What or who forced Zhukov to stand up for Lenin in this way is unknown. Egorov, a former officer of the tsarist army, a brave man, on whose body after numerous wounds there was no living space left, was not a member of any of the clans. He always tried to avoid intrigue and decided too late to join the winning side of the “conspiracy.” Once under arrest, Egorov understood perfectly well what was required of him, and spent days writing detailed testimony, where he willingly presented information about conspiratorial activities.

One of the denunciations against A.I. Egorov, addressed to I.V. Stalin, lay down on the table K.E. Voroshilov. This was followed by a report from the head of the construction and housing department of the Red Army and the deputy people's commissar of defense, in which it was reported that A.I. During the conversation, Egorov expressed “dissatisfaction with the incorrect coverage and belittlement of his, Egorov’s, role during the Civil War and the undeserved exaltation of the role of Stalin and Voroshilov.” On January 25, 1938, a resolution was issued by the Council of People's Commissars of the USSR and the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks, in which Comrade Egorov A.I. was accused of working extremely unsatisfactorily during his work as Chief of Staff of the Red Army, ruining the work of the General Staff, entrusting it to seasoned spies... Further, he obviously knew about the conspiracy existing in the army and tried to organize “his own anti-party character group." All this was enough to remove him from the post of 1st Deputy People's Commissar of Defense and in January appoint him to the post of commander of the Transcaucasian Military District.

On February 4, 1938, he assumed the duties of commander, but in March he was summoned to Moscow and arrested on March 27, 1938, although the warrant for his arrest was dated a month later.

According to his testimony, 138 people were arrested and shot, but Egorov did not feel any improvement in his fate and then decided to take the last step.

The Marshal writes a repentant letter to Stalin, where he begs him to “give him some position,” and in confirmation of his complete loyalty... asks for permission to personally shoot his wife Galina Tseshkovskaya, a German and American spy.

Could such people, if they were at the head of the Red Army, somehow positively influence the course of World War II?

Historians think it's unlikely.

And not only because of their personal and professional qualities.

The two remaining marshals, Voroshilov and Budyonny, did not distinguish themselves in the same way during the war.

The reason for the first defeats and three and a half million prisoners during the six months of war lies in something completely different.

The country completely lacked a defensive doctrine. Soldiers and generals only learned to attack, to “beat the enemy on his territory,” and this is a miscalculation on a completely different level - on the political...

The military leadership talent of many repressed generals and, in particular, Marshal TUKHACHEVSKY was best demonstrated during the suppression of peasant uprisings and surplus appropriation. He rotted thousands of people in concentration camps and “burned out” dozens of villages with gases

Where do the ears stick out from?

The purge of the senior command staff of the armed forces began with Dmitry Schmidt (real name David Aronovich Gutman).

A full Knight of St. George, he was a legendary figure. He commanded the “wild division” of the highlanders, and at the time of his arrest he headed the only heavy tank brigade in the Red Army at that time.

Like many military men, he highly appreciated the services of the creator of the Red Army, Leon Trotsky. In 1927, after he was expelled from the party Schmidt, in front of witnesses, said to Comrade Stalin: “Look, Koba, I’ll cut off your ears.”

Joseph Vissarionovich remembered this comic threat well and ten years later he repressed all the officers who began their careers under the leadership of Trotsky.

The final deliverance from the Trotskyist legacy was the renaming of the Workers' and Peasants' Red Army into the Soviet Army in February 1946 and the second round of repressions against the military who doubted the military genius of the “father of nations.”

In 1937, Stalin began a global purge of the army

Stalin shot Mikhail Tukhachevsky and other Red commanders not for preparing a coup, but for cutting the defense budget

In 1937, STALIN began a global purge of the army. If we talk only about the top, then out of 85 leaders of the army and navy who were members of the supreme council under the People's Commissariat of Defense, only six people were not affected by repression. Three of the five Soviet marshals were shot - Mikhail TUKHACHEVSKY, Vasily BLUCHER, Alexander EGOROV. For some reason, it is believed that they all suffered innocently, and also because of the loss of these great commanders, our troops had to retreat all the way to Moscow in 1941.

The myth of the brilliant commander Mikhail Tukhachevsky and others who suffered from the purges of the brilliant “division commander Kotovs”, appeared in the USSR after the 20th Congress of the CPSU, as part of Khrushchev’s criticism of the cult of personality. Nikita Sergeevich tried to contrast the supposed military genius Stalin his guilt for the repression of 40 thousand officers. With them Hitler would have been defeated already in 1942.

In fact, Stalin did not bleed the army, but renewed it. The militarization of the USSR proceeded at an unprecedented pace. Despite the repressions, the officer corps almost tripled from 1937 to 1940! The number of officers with higher and secondary education increased from 164 thousand to 385 thousand people. Of course, these were newly minted personnel who had not yet been properly tested. But the upcoming war was also completely different from the First World War. Old knowledge and techniques still did not help there.

This is how the world's most publicized saboteur, SS Obersturmbannführer, comments on the consequences of Stalin's repressions in his memoirs Otto Skorzeny: “The gigantic purge among the military has misled our political intelligence. She was convinced that we had achieved a decisive success, and Hitler shared the same opinion. However, the Red Army, contrary to general opinion, was not weakened, but strengthened... The posts of repressed commanders of armies, corps, divisions, brigades, regiments and battalions were taken by young officers - ideological communists. After the total purge of 1937, a new Russian army emerged, capable of enduring the most brutal battles. Russian generals carried out orders, and did not engage in conspiracies and betrayal, as often happened in our highest positions.”

According to the official version, the reason for the brutal purges in the Red Army is the uncovered conspiracy against Stalin. But this is a very strong simplification. The struggle between several military clans was not against Stalin, but for proximity to his body.

At that time, the USSR was undergoing a large-scale rearmament of the army. A military-industrial complex was created, which later became the economic basis of the country. The army command understood its significance perfectly and fought for the right to control financial flows. It was at this crossroads that the interests of Deputy People's Commissar of Defense for Armaments Mikhail Tukhachevsky and People's Commissar Kliment Voroshilov.

Both marshals were far from technology and raced to grab onto any invention that seemed ingenious to them. For example, a certain inventor Baranov proposed to adopt an electromagnetic installation for catching projectiles. The essence of the mechanism was that several super-powerful magnets were installed around our battery, which deflected enemy shells to the side, and the battery became invulnerable.

Academician Abram Ioffe At the same time, he proposed the “Death Rays” installation, which was supposed to fatally infect people with radiation at a distance of 400 meters from our trenches.

Tukhachevsky took up the promotion of magnets, and Voroshilov took up the rays. It took both of them three years to understand the impossibility of their projects. One can only guess how much time and millions of rubles were spent on such idiotic undertakings, since most similar projects are stored in archives under the heading “top secret.”

The black hole of the defense budget under these marshals was their favorite brainchild, the “Special Technical Bureau for Military Inventions for Special Purposes” engineer Vladimir Bekauri. Proposing to wage war exclusively with radio-controlled tanks, ships and aircraft, he was far ahead of his time, but technical means did not allow his “brilliant” ideas to be realized.

For example, the miniature submarine Pygmy could dive, but could not surface

Blucher refused to fight the Japanese

The second to be shot was the marshal Vasily Blucher. A rare case in the era of Stalin’s purges, when all points of the sentence, including “Japanese intelligence agent,” were practically true.

By that time, Blucher had been commanding the Far Eastern Front for many years.

The legendary hero of the Civil War, the first holder of the Order of the Red Banner and the Red Star, feeling like the autocratic ruler of a vast region, got used to a calm and comfortable life away from the Moscow authorities. As they said then, he was morally decomposed.

The hero of the Civil War became addicted to copious libations in the company of sycophants and hangers-on. In 1932, having reached his fifties, he married for the third time. His chosen one was a 17-year-old girl Glafira Bezverkhova. However, this fact in itself was not particularly reprehensible - the main thing was that the assigned work should not suffer. But in this case it suffered,” says the historian and publicist Igor Pykhalov. - During nine years of command, Blucher never bothered to build a highway along the Trans-Siberian Railway, which made the supply of troops very vulnerable.

On the morning of June 13, 1938, the head of the NKVD department for the Far Eastern Territory ran over to the Japanese Genrikh Lyushkov. The security officer managed to carry two bags of operational maps and other secret documents across the border. The Japanese gained access to virtually all Soviet military secrets in the Far East. Two days later, the Japanese charge d'affaires in the USSR Nishi officially demanded the withdrawal of Soviet border guards from the heights in the area of Lake Khasan and the transfer of territory to the Japanese.

Meanwhile, two Japanese companies attacked our border post. During a fierce battle, they managed to capture the Bezymyannaya height.

The incompetent command of BLUCHER during the border battles with the Japanese showed the Germans that the USSR would be easy prey for them

Egorov asked permission to shoot his wife

The execution of the marshal on February 23, 1939 put an end to the repressions Alexandra Egorova. The formal reason for his arrest is considered to be a statement Georgy Zhukov People's Commissar Voroshilov. Zhukov writes: “In November 1917... I heard the speech of the then right-wing Socialist-Revolutionary, Lieutenant Colonel A. I. Yegorov, who in his speech called comrade Lenin an adventurer, an envoy of the Germans."

According to his testimony, 138 people were arrested and shot, but Egorov did not feel any improvement in his fate and then decided to take the last step. The Marshal writes a letter to Stalin, where he begs him to “give him some position,” and in confirmation of his complete loyalty, asks for permission to personally shoot his wife Galina Tseshkovskaya- German and American spy.

Could such people, if they were at the head of the Red Army, somehow positively influence the course of World War II? Historians think it's unlikely. And not only because of their personal and professional qualities. The two remaining marshals are Voroshilov and Budyonny They did not distinguish themselves in anything during the war. The reason for the first defeats and three and a half million prisoners during the six months of war lies in something completely different. The country completely lacked a defensive doctrine. Soldiers and generals only learned to attack, to “beat the enemy on his territory,” and this is a miscalculation on a completely different level - on the political one.

Where do the ears stick out from?

The purge of the armed forces' senior command began with Dmitry Shmidt(real name David Aronovich Gutman). A full Knight of St. George, he was a legendary figure. He commanded the “wild division” of the highlanders, and at the time of his arrest he headed the only heavy tank brigade in the Red Army at that time.

Like many military men, he highly appreciated the services of the creator of the Red Army Leon Trotsky. In 1927, after he was expelled from the party, Schmidt said to Comrade Stalin in front of witnesses: “Look, Koba, I’ll cut off your ears.”

Joseph Vissarionovich remembered this comic threat well and ten years later he repressed all the officers who began their careers under the leadership of Trotsky.

On this day:

Great Oceanographer

Born on December 25, 1905, Pyotr Petrovich SHIRSHOV (died 02/17/1953), oceanographer and hydrobiologist, polar explorer, academician (1939), Hero of the Soviet Union (1938), People's Commissar, then Minister of the Navy of the USSR (1942-1948), first director Institute of Oceanology of the USSR Academy of Sciences, which now bears his name.

Twice Hero Stepan Krechetov

Stepan Ivanovich KRECHETOV was born on December 25, 1919 (died January 19, 1975), bomber pilot, twice Hero of the Soviet Union.

Twice Hero Stepan Krechetov

Stepan Ivanovich KRECHETOV was born on December 25, 1919 (died January 19, 1975), bomber pilot, twice Hero of the Soviet Union.

Originally from Siberian peasants. After finishing school in Minusinsk, he entered the Kansk Agricultural College. While studying at the technical school, he simultaneously mastered flying while studying at the flying club. In 1939 he voluntarily entered military service. In 1940 he graduated from the Balashov Military Aviation School and became a bomber pilot.

As a pilot in a long-range aviation bomber squadron, he participated in combat operations from June 1941. During the war, he made more than 400 combat missions deep (several hundred kilometers) behind enemy lines. The crews under the command of Kretov destroyed at least 60 German aircraft on the ground, and also shot down at least 10 enemy aircraft in the air, which is a high figure for a bomber aircraft pilot. By the end of the war, he was a squadron commander of the 21st Long-Range Bomber Regiment. During the war, he left a downed plane with a parachute eight times, of which once, after the bombing of the Kerch port, over the sea, a kilometer from the coast. After completing another mission, I returned about 800 kilometers to the airfield on one engine, since the second one was damaged. On March 13, 1944, he was awarded the first title “Hero of the Soviet Union” for military services. The second rank was awarded after the war, on February 23, 1948.

At the end of the war, he served in command and staff positions in the air force, continued his studies, after which he switched to teaching. In 1950 he graduated from the Higher Officer Flight and Tactical School, and in 1958 from the Air Force Academy. In 1960, he was awarded the military rank of colonel. Since July 1961 he taught at the Rostov VKIU, since December 1973 - at the Military Academy named after F. E. Dzerzhinsky. He died in January 1975 and was buried at the Vvedenskoye Cemetery in Moscow.

First nuclear

On December 25, 1946, the first nuclear reactor in Europe was launched in the USSR under the leadership of I.V. Kurchatov.

First nuclear

On December 25, 1946, the first nuclear reactor in Europe was launched in the USSR under the leadership of I.V. Kurchatov.

In the USSR, theoretical and experimental studies of the features of startup, operation and control of reactors were carried out by a group of physicists and engineers under the leadership of Academician I.V. Kurchatov. The first Soviet reactor F-1 was built in Laboratory No. 2 of the USSR Academy of Sciences (Moscow).

This reactor was brought into critical condition on December 25, 1946. The F-1 reactor was made of graphite blocks and had the shape of a ball with a diameter of approximately 7.5 m. In the central part of the ball with a diameter of 6 m, uranium rods were placed through holes in the graphite blocks. The F-1 reactor did not have a cooling system, so it operated at very low power levels (with average power not exceeding 20 W. For comparison, the first American reactor, CP-1, rarely exceeded 1 W of power). The results of research at the F-1 reactor became the basis for projects of more complex industrial reactors. In 1948, the I-1 reactor (according to other sources, it was called A-1) for the production of plutonium was put into operation, and on June 27, 1954, the world's first nuclear power plant with an electrical capacity of 5 MW came into operation in Obninsk.

On December 25, 1991 at 19.38, the USSR flag was lowered on the dome of the Kremlin Palace and the tricolor, the so-called tricolor, was raised.

On December 25, 1991 at 19.38, the USSR flag was lowered on the dome of the Kremlin Palace and the tricolor, the so-called tricolor, was raised.

Gorbachev officially spoke on Central TV for the last time: “Due to the current situation with the formation of the Commonwealth of Independent States, I am ceasing my activities as President of the USSR.”
This was the greatest act of betrayal on the part of the leadership of the USSR and the greatest tragedy for the peoples of the Union. In memory of our state Banner, we publish a poem by Nikolai Tikhonov

SOVIET FLAG

Flag overflowing with fire

Blooming like the dawn.

And thin gold on it

Three virtues burn:

That is the hammer of free labor,

Sickle bend cast,

Five pointed star

With a gold border.

The people's enemy was defeated

By the people's hand,

And a hundred nations this flag

They soar above themselves,—

At the highest altitude,

At the farthest latitude,

Among the fields and cities,

Between the waves of countless rows.

In it - hello to humanity, -

And there is no simpler flag in the world;

In it is the hot color of our glory,—

And there is no hotter flag in the world;

In it is a formidable light of our strength,—

There is no stronger flag in the world;

It contains the truth of our red years,—

There is no truer flag!

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Why was Marshal Tukhachevsky shot? Why they shot Mikhail Tukhachevsky and other red commanders Why they shot Tukhachevsky

Egorov asked permission to shoot his wife...

Where do the ears stick out from?

Blucher refused to fight the Japanese

Egorov asked permission to shoot his wife

Where do the ears stick out from?

On this day:

Great Oceanographer

Twice Hero Stepan Krechetov

Twice Hero Stepan Krechetov

First nuclear

First nuclear

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