What Stalin Knew (52 page)

rupt ‘‘the plan to send our people to settle in other countries’’ and de-

manded they increase their political work among Soviet citizens. At one

point, Golikov admits that ‘‘the work is not easy.’’24

At a meeting of senior military leaders in November 1945, Stalin ar-

gued that Zhukov was attempting to claim that he was the sole architect of

victory; in March 1946 Stalin recalled him from Germany. There followed

a series of moves engineered by Stalin but left to the new deputy minister

of defense, Nikolay A. Bulganin, to execute. In June 1946 an expanded

session of the Main Military Council was called to discuss the Zhukov case.

The meeting opened with testimony from Chief Marshal of Aviation Alek-

sandr A. Novikov that Zhukov had frequently spoken against Stalin’s war-

time leadership. (Typically, Novikov testified nine years later that he had

been arrested in April 1946 and tortured until he agreed to sign the accusa-

tions against Zhukov.) Golikov, then head of the Personnel Directorate,

was among those present. He had prepared a notebook detailing his view

of Zhukov, replete with personal details, and he spoke to this at the meet-

THE FINAL RECKONING

243

ing. By the end of the meeting, every member of the Politburo also spoke

against Zhukov, virtually in chorus, and he was assigned—exiled might be

a better term—to the militarily unimportant Odessa Military District. Goli-

kov had extracted his first pound of flesh from Zhukov, whom he blamed

for his troubles in command during the war, but his guidance came from

Stalin.25

In 1949–50 Golikov reportedly participated in the work of a commis-

sion called for by Stalin to investigate the so-called Leningrad affair, in

which the Leningrad party leadership was suspected of acting indepen-

dently of central party control. The commission determined that Colonel

General Iosif Vasilevich Shikin, head of the Chief Political Directorate

of the Soviet Army, was a member of the ‘ Vosnesensky opposition,’’ and

Shikin was removed from his position. When Golikov was replaced by

Aleksei A. Yepishev as head of the Chief Political Directorate just one year

after his elevation to marshal of the Soviet Union in 1961, it was report-

edly because of pressure from the Leningrad party organization, which

resented his role in the Leningrad affair.26

With the death of Stalin and the demise of Beria, Zhukov became de-

fense minister once more and was instrumental in ensuring Khrushchev’s

victory over Stalinist hard-liners Molotov, Kaganovich, and others in the

June 1957 party plenum. But later that year Khrushchev saw in Zhukov

a rival for control of party and state institutions, and in October, while

Zhukov was making an official visit to Yugoslavia and Albania, he was

dismissed as defense minister. At this point, Golikov, then commanding

the Military Academy of Armored Troops, wrote Khrushchev to the effect

that everyone at the academy supported his actions against Zhukov. In

January 1958 Khrushchev appointed Golikov director of the Main Political

Directorate of the Soviet armed forces. Although Khrushchev knew, of

course, of Golikov’s cowardly actions at Stalingrad, he also knew that Goli-

kov hated Zhukov and could be relied on in this political post to eliminate

Zhukov’s influence. After removing Zhukov from the party Presidium and

Central Committee and arranging his retirement in March 1958, Golikov

did everything possible to isolate him and prevent old friends from visiting

him. In recognition of Golikov’s role in the elimination of Zhukov, Khru-

shchev promoted him to marshal of the Soviet Union in 1961. But Khru-

shchev was removed as first secretary in October 1964, and in 1971 he

died. Golikov was replaced as head of the Main Political Directorate in

1962. He died in 1980, reputedly ‘‘shunned by his fellow marshals.’’27

Finally, there is the fate of Ivan I. Proskurov. In the fall of 1941, his

244

THE FINAL RECKONING

wife, Aleksandra, and his two daughters were sent to Kuibyshev with only

the clothes on their backs (everything else had been confiscated). They

were housed with strangers. Aleksandra and her older daughter, Lidia,

were subjected to continuing interrogation, after which Aleksandra was

arrested and imprisoned. The girls were left on their own until December

1941, when their mother and they were transferred by prison train to

Petropavlovsk in north Kazakhstan. Here, Aleksandra was given docu-

ments identifying her as the wife of Ivan Proskurov, enemy of the people,

and she and her daughters were exiled to a remote village. She remained

there with her younger daughter, Galina, suffering severe hardship and

illness, until Ivan Proskurov’s posthumous rehabilitation on May 11, 1954.

Meanwhile, their older daughter, fifteen-year-old Lidia, decided to risk

returning to Moscow; after a harrowing journey in wartime conditions,

she made it. She was helped in obtaining official permission to remain in

the city through the intercession and assistance of famed polar air explorer

Major General of Aviation Mikhail V. Vodopianov, a friend of her father’s.28

In a cemetery not far from the Yu. A. Gagarin Air Force Academy in the

town of Monino, a suburb of Moscow, there is an unusual grave site. A

large, impressive monument bears a photograph of Proskurov and the

words ‘‘Hero of the Soviet Union Lieutenant General of Aviation Ivan Iosi-

fovich Proskurov, Commander of Bomber Aviation’’ and ‘‘Proskurova Alek-

sandra Ignatievna.’’ At the base of the monument are the words ‘‘From the

Ministry of Defense USSR.’’ But the general does not lie here. No one really

knows where his remains are buried.

Aleksandra died in 1990. At her request, her ashes were placed in an

urn and interred at the site.

Conclusion

Will the Future Be a Repeat

of the Past?

The characterization of Stalin that emerges from

this book is at variance with that advanced by many American, European,

and Russian historians. It seems doubtful that Stalin’s foreign policy fol-

lowed the conventional patterns of nineteenth-century diplomacy. Some

have said that his August 1939 treaty with Nazi Germany, which succeeded

in delaying German aggression for over a year, enabled Stalin to improve

the USSR’s defensive posture somewhat. There were improvements, but

Stalin hesitated until it was too late to take the steps urged on him by

his military professionals. Actually, Stalin’s underlying motivation for the

1939 treaty was to render the German conquest of Poland inevitable. This,

he hoped, would result in a major conflict between Germany and Poland’s

allies, France and Great Britain. His reasoning was based on Marxist-

Leninist doctrine, which held that such a conflict would exhaust the prin-

cipal European capitalist powers, creating a revolutionary situation that

the USSR could exploit to eliminate the German threat and expand Soviet

power throughout the Continent.

Another view justifying the nonaggression pact was advanced by So-

viet propaganda and is still held today in official publications in the Rus-

sian Federation. Stalin was convinced that throughout the 1930s the for-

eign policy of France and Great Britain, supported by America, was based

on acceptance of Hitler’s demands in the hope he would turn against the

Soviet Union. This policy culminated in the infamous Munich agreement

246

CONCLUSION

of September 1938 between Germany and Italy on the one hand and

France and Great Britain on the other to render Czechoslovakia helpless in

the face of German military force. Neither Czechoslovakia nor the USSR

was party to the negotiations, which Stalin saw as constituting another,

even more dangerous phase in the West’s anti-Soviet program. Stalin con-

tinued to distrust the Western powers and their warnings of Hitler’s inten-

tions throughout the period between Poland’s defeat and June 22, 1941.

Stalin’s rejection of these warnings and his pathological antipathy toward

the West were motivated in great part by his belief that Western leaders

were totally anticommunist on ideological grounds, hence determined to

pursue anti-Soviet goals. From the late 1920s until the purges of 1937–38,

reporting received by Stalin from Soviet intelligence sources and diplo-

mats in Great Britain, France, the United States, Poland, Czechoslovakia,

and elsewhere constantly reinforced these views.1

Many individuals and groups in Great Britain, France, and America

indeed feared the spread of communism, but Stalin seemed unable or

unwilling to understand the reasons underlying the West’s attitudes to-

ward Soviet communism. His coercive collective farm policy, the famine

that followed, and the brutal purges of 1937–38 were observed by many in

the West with concern and apprehension. Moreover, the French and Brit-

ish people’s fear of war, based on memories of the horrendous losses in

1914–18, disposed their governments to succumb to Hitler’s demands even

though many, such as Winston Churchill, recognized the danger and spoke

out for a more vigorous anti-Nazi position. Later, in September 1939,

when Great Britain declared war on Germany and Churchill joined the

cabinet, it was virtually inconceivable that this stalwart anti-Nazi would

have joined Hitler in an attack on the USSR. As for America, Roosevelt

would never have departed from his anti-Hitler, pro-British stance to urge

attacks on the USSR. Stalin had little grasp of the political realities in

Western countries and his prejudices were increased by reporting from

Soviet ambassadors and intelligence residencies in London, Paris, and

Washington that pandered to and magnified his fears. How must intel-

ligent men such as Ivan M. Maisky in London and Solomon A. Lozovsky in

Moscow have felt when they parroted the party line in their discussions

with American and British diplomats in the spring of 1941? To do other-

wise would have meant their deaths.2

None of Stalin’s hopes came to fruition, largely because of unforeseen

events. The occupation of Denmark and Norway, followed by the rapid

collapse of Dutch and Belgian defenses, the total defeat of the British

CONCLUSION

247

expeditionary force, and the collapse of the French army—all during April,

May, and June 1940—destroyed the possibility of the long conflict he had

envisioned. The most important reasons, however, for the failure of the

Marxist-Leninist scenario and the tragedy of June 1941 were to be found in

Stalin’s personality, his gross errors of judgment, and the ideologically

warped system he created. For example, his ‘‘recovery of the tsarist pa-

trimony’’ is often cited as a positive result of the 1939 treaty with Hitler.

Why then did Stalin immediately alienate the populations of the territories

he acquired through it by brutally imposing the Stalinist system on them?

Was this not the action of an ideologue indifferent to the fact that these

people had never known Soviet communism and that the harsh methods

used in implementing it would create recruits for German sabotage and

espionage? Or did he believe that his position and that of his system would

never be secure unless he could impose it on them?

Stalin’s personal responsibility for the monumental losses of the war

years, particularly those suffered in the first tragic months of the war,

cannot be minimized or denied. It is unfortunate, however, that successive

Soviet governments consistently concealed the truth and that the Russian

Federation continues to withhold archival evidence that would undoubt-

edly clarify Stalin’s actions.

Nikita S. Khrushchev’s ‘‘secret speech’’ of 1956 did not tell the whole

story. The Soviet leaders who replaced him soon began to rally round the

dead Boss, refusing to allow full access to the records or permit the pub-

lication of material critical of Stalin’s actions in the prewar period. In

the immediate post-Soviet period some criticism appeared, but because

it lacked essential archival detail much of it was unconvincing, and it

ignored the most serious Stalinist actions and errors. In recent years, de-

fense of Stalin and the punitive organs on which he and his system de-

pended has become more widespread in Russia, while access to key ar-

chives or their public release has virtually ceased. Incredible though it may

seem, archivally sourced material that was officially released and pub-

lished in the mid-1990s was later reclassified by some agencies and denied

to researchers in its original form even though these researchers possessed

specific archival references.

Defenders of Stalin’s role have blamed the extensive, comprehensive