What Stalin Knew (43 page)

exist until subordinate units are faced with the same responsibilities

for combat training as for accidents. I am convinced of this as re-

cently I have spent more time at the unit level.18

Proskurov’s memorandum, which made it clear that the accidents

were primarily the result of poor training, may well have had some effect

on Stalin. On May 4, 1941, he signed a Politburo proposal that Comrade

Bochkov, USSR procurator, review the cases of Proskurov and Mironov

inasmuch as their past meritorious service in the Red Army argued for

their sentences being limited to ‘‘a public reprimand.’’19 Stalin’s approval of

this proposal probably occurred not because he regretted his actions but

because the memorandum made him realize that Proskurov could be a

dangerous opponent if provoked. He knew he could not control the man.

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THE PURGES REVIVED

Poor Proskurov. His logic was impeccable but it contradicted Stalinist

thinking. Accidents had to be blamed on someone, regardless of reasons;

he and Rychagov were the scapegoats at hand. In Stalin’s view, though, the

net needed to be cast wider. Should not all those with Spanish connections

be looked on with suspicion as members of a conspiracy to sabotage the air

forces?

Once again Proskurov was without a job. Visiting him on June 18,

1941, his close friend and former navigator, Gavril M. Prokofev, found him

in very poor spirits and assumed that his depression was connected to his

failure to obtain a new assignment. Perhaps, but there were also sinister

events in train during April, May, and June about which he would probably

not have spoken to Prokofiev. A series of arrests were taking place that he

knew would eventually center on the circle of air force officers who had

fought with him in Spain. At first it had appeared that technical and engi-

neering officers were the target, but then, on April 1, Ivan F. Sakrier, Doctor

of Technical Sciences and chief of the Armaments Directorate of the Red

Army’s air forces was arrested.20

After Sakrier, it was the turn of Petr K. Nikonov, military engineer, first

rank, who had been the chief of the Eighth Directorate of Red Army Avia-

tion. Based on Sakrier’s testimony, he was accused of participating in an

anti-Soviet conspiracy but refused to admit to the charge.21 A few days

later another military engineer, Grigory F. Mikhno, was arrested. Under

hostile interrogation, he admitted to having been recruited by Sakrier and

having engaged in sabotage to disrupt armaments production for the air

forces.22

On May 18 another technical officer, Colonel Georgy M. Shevchenko,

chief of the Scientific-Testing Proving Ground for Aviation Armaments of

the air forces, was arrested. He was accused of membership in an anti-

Soviet conspiracy on the basis not only of Sakrier’s testimony but of later

testimony by Aleksandr D. Loktionov and Rychagov, who would be ar-

rested on June 19 and 24, respectively. Both were former chiefs of the Red

Army’s air forces.23

On May 23 Major General Aleksandr I. Filin, chief of the Scientific

Research Institute of the Red Army Air Forces was arrested. This time the

testimony of Yakov V. Smushkevich, Spanish veteran and twice a Hero of

the Soviet Union, and of Grigory M. Shtern, former chief of PVO (National

Air Defense) and one-time chief Soviet adviser in Spain, was used in accus-

ing Filin of sabotage. Filin made no admissions.24

Now Stalin’s assault on Spanish civil war veterans began in earnest. On

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199

May 30, Major General of Aviation Ernst G. Shakht was arrested, perhaps

partly as a result of Proskurov’s April 21 memorandum criticizing earlier

training procedures. In early May the Politburo decreed that the air force

commanders of the Orlov and Moscow Military Districts, Major General

P. A. Kotov and Lieutenant General Petr I. Pumpur, be relieved because the

state of combat training in their districts was unsatisfactory; the decree

read: ‘‘The pilots flew very little; they had not mastered night and high-

altitude flights, weapons firing, aerial combat, and bombing.’’ Kotov ended

up as an instructor in a military academy and survived. Pumpur did not. On

May 27 he was accused of having tried to make Shakht, ‘‘who was consid-

ered untrustworthy and a suspicious character,’’ his deputy. The Politburo

asked Anatoly N. Mikheev, head of military counterintelligence, to investi-

gate Shakht.25 Born in Switzerland of German parents who supported the

Russian Revolution, Shakht came to the Soviet Union in 1922 and two

years later completed the Borisoglebsky Aviation School. During the 1930s

he commanded an aviation unit that supported the Red Army Air Forces

Directorate and often piloted for its commander, Yakov I. Alksnis, who was

later executed as an enemy of the people. In 1936 Shakht volunteered for

service in Spain and commanded the First Bombardment Squadron (his

replacement in that command was Proskurov). His friendship with Alksnis

and his service in Spain, ‘‘where he certainly made contact with Germans,’’

combined with his foreign birth and his German parentage, were sufficient

evidence for the NKGB Military Counterintelligence Service to confirm

his guilt.

Pumpur, a Hero of the Soviet Union who had commanded fighter avia-

tion in Spain, was arrested on June 1, two days after Shakht. On June 4,

1941, the Politburo issued a decree that ‘‘satisfied an NKGB request that be-

fore the Pumpur case was tried in court it be turned over to the NKGB for

investigation.’’ Extreme physical torture produced the desired admission

from Pumpur that he had been recruited into an anti-Soviet conspiracy plot

by Yakov V. Smushkevich. Pumpur later repudiated his ‘‘confession.’’26

The arrest of Nikolai N. Vasilchenko, the assistant inspector general of

the Red Army air forces, took place on June 1. The testimony used against

him came from former military intelligence chiefs Uritsky, Berzin, and

Orlov, all victims of the 1937–38 purges. On June 4 Major General of

Aviation Pavel P. Yusupov, assistant chief of staff of the Red Army air

forces, was arrested. He admitted to having been recruited by Smush-

kevich into an anti-Soviet military conspiracy in 1939. Other members of

the conspiracy included Fedor K. Arzhenukhin (a lieutenant general of

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THE PURGES REVIVED

aviation), Rychagov, and Volodin. On June 6 the NKGB returned to the

technical staff and arrested Volko Ya. Tsilov, a military engineer, first rank,

and section chief of the Scientific-Testing Proving Ground for Aviation

Armaments. He admitted to having been recruited by Shevchenko into a

conspiracy to sabotage the production of new arms for the air forces.

Also arrested on June 6 was Sergei G. Onisko, a military engineer, first

rank, who was a department chief of the Scientific-Testing Proving Ground

for Aviation Armaments. He, too, was found guilty, on the basis of Shev-

chenko’s testimony, of sabotaging the aviation armaments program.27

Major General Aleksandr A. Levin, deputy commander of the air forces

of the Leningrad Military District, was arrested on June 7. Arrested by the

Cheka back in 1918 on suspicion of anti-Soviet activity, he had left the party

in 1921 because he disagreed with Lenin’s New Economic Policy. Rein-

stated in 1932, he commanded the Stalingrad School for Military Pilots,

where he taught Alksnis. Levin remained a close friend until the end. Pros-

kurov, too, trained at the Stalingrad school while he was director. Levin

was accused of having been a spy by testimony from Shakht and of par-

ticipating in an anti-Soviet conspiracy by the testimony of others, includ-

ing Rychagov. In throwing Levin in with this group of aviation officers and

technical personnel, the NKGB investigators may have been counting on

his early record to strengthen their case.28

The same day, June 7, Colonel General Grigory M. Shtern, Hero of the

Soviet Union, who succeeded Jan Berzin as chief Soviet military adviser to

the Spanish republican government, was arrested. Shtern had served in

the Far East, where he participated in battles with the Japanese at Lake

Khasan and then at Khalkin Gol. He also commanded the Eighth Army in

the Finnish war, after which he returned to the Far East. On March 19,

1941, he was appointed head of National Air Defense (PVO), which had

earlier been virtually ignored by the Soviet leadership. Shtern’s arrest left

the PVO leaderless at a critical time. (It would not get a new chief until

June 19, when Nikolai N. Voronov was moved in from the Artillery Direc-

torate, to which he returned in July.) Some believe that the arrest was

prompted by the failure of PVO to challenge an unauthorized flight of a

German transport plane into Moscow’s airspace on May 15. This seems

unlikely. Rather, Shtern’s arrest had been planned in advance, part of

a broader program to eliminate the most outspoken of Soviet military

leaders and to blame them for problems in military aviation. In Shtern’s

case, the crime was speaking of Stalin’s scandalous neglect of air defense.29

Evidence that scapegoating of armaments industry officials had

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201

reached its zenith came when the people’s commissar for armaments,

Boris L. Vannikov, was himself arrested on June 7 and relieved of his

position two days later. In his memoirs Vannikov recalls Stalin’s comment

to him that ‘‘there are many scoundrels among military engineers. . . . They

will soon be arrested.’’ Criticizing his own behavior and that of many of his

colleagues, Vannikov writes, ‘ We did not display firmness or adhere to

principles, we fulfilled requests that we knew would be harmful to the state.

Here we displayed not only discipline but a desire to avoid repression.’’30

The arrest on June 8 of Yakov V. Smushkevich demonstrated that this

was a planned operation and not a spur-of-the-moment action. Smush-

kevich was in the hospital recovering from an operation on his leg neces-

sitated, ironically, by injuries suffered in a 1938 air crash when Stalin

honored him for his service in Spain by naming him commander of the

May Day air parade. Smushkevich’s arrest was a major event. He was

well known, respected, and admired not only by his air forces colleagues

but by others in the armed forces and the civilian government. Zhukov,

under whom Smushkevich ran the air forces in the battle of Khalkin Gol,

thought highly of his ability as a commander and pilot. Admiral Nikolai G.

Kuznetsov, who had been naval adviser in Spain, knew him well and

placed great trust in him, as well as in Shtern, Rychagov, and Proskurov.

Aleksey I. Shakhurin, commissar of the aviation industry during the war,

speaks warmly of Smushkevich in his memoirs.31

The arrests continued. On June 17 Konstantin M. Gusev, commander

of the air forces of the Far Eastern Front, was apprehended. He was ac-

cused of having been involved in an anti-Soviet military conspiracy by

Smushkevich but refused to confess. His arrest was followed by that of

Aleksandr D. Loktionov, former commander of the Baltic Military District

and head of the Red Army’s air forces. It seems likely that Loktionov’s arrest

was related to Stalin’s displeasure at Loktionov’s responses to questions

Stalin put to him at a March 1938 meeting of senior air force officers and

members of the party and government leadership. The meeting, which

took place during the purges, dealt with air accidents. Loktionov’s replies

emphasized the problems caused by the loss of experienced commanders,

their replacement by younger, untrained officers, and the unsatisfactory

condition of aircraft delivered to air units. Stalin bullied Loktionov but

Loktionov did not change his story. As we saw in Proskurov’s case, Stalin

never forgot a person whom he could not dominate.32 Arrested the same

day as Loktionov was Pavel A. Alekseev, deputy commander of the air

forces of the Baltic Military District. Under interrogation he admitted that

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he had been recruited into an anti-Soviet military conspiracy by Loktionov;

others involved in the alleged conspiracy were Smushkevich, Sakrier, Filin,

Pumpur, and Gusev. Alekseev confessed to having sabotaged the arming of

the air forces by accepting incomplete and inadequate aircraft from build-

ers and delaying the provision of air units with new equipment.33

On June 19, just three days before the Nazi onslaught, the orgy of

arrests came to a temporary halt. By this time it must have become evident

to Beria and NKGB chief Merkulov, whose investigative unit was responsi-

ble for these cases, that the Germans were up to something. Reports from

the border troops on the movement of Wehrmacht units ever closer to the