It seems that Pavlov’s wife forgot that Kulik’s deputy, Grigorii Savchenko, had also signed the petition.38 The petitioners even prepared a draft decision for Stalin’s signature that would have put an end to the arrests. Stalin did not forget this challenge to his authority and eventually all four signatories vanished.
Pavel Alliluev was first. He was Stalin’s brother-in-law, the beloved brother of Stalin’s wife, Nadezhda, who had committed suicide six years earlier, on November 9, 1932. Alliluev died mysteriously ‘of a heart attack’ in his office on November 2, 1938, after he found out that literally all of his subordinates had been arrested. His daughter, son, and nephew suspect he was poisoned by the NKVD.39 Later, in 1946, after her arrest and conviction, Pavel’s wife Yevgenia spent ten years in Vladimir Prison in solitary confinement.40 The following year, their daughter Kira was arrested and then exiled for many years.
Possibly, Pavlov was next, because during interrogations in February–May 1939, investigators forced Mikhail Koltsov to testify that in Spain (where Pavlov commanded the tank forces of the Republican Army) Pavlov had been a defeatist, swindler, and drunkard.41 At that time Stalin did not give the order to pursue the issue of Pavlov’s conduct in Spain, but now, in 1941, he decided to get rid of Pavlov.
General Savchenko had also already been targeted. He was arrested three days before the war, in connection with the Rychagov Case (Appendix I, see http://www.smershbook.com).42 On October 28, 1941, he was shot without trial.
In November 1941 Stalin went after Grigorii Kulik, who had been one of his trusted generals since the Civil War. In Spain his nom de guerre was ‘General Cooper’, and in 1940 he received a promotion to marshal. However, he did not entirely escape the Great Terror. In May 1939, his wife, Kira Simonich-Kulik, disappeared without a trace.43 Shortly before her disappearance, Stalin told Kulik that his wife was an Italian spy and said that he should divorce her, which Kulik declined to do. Stalin’s suspicion of Simonich-Kulik was likely prompted by her foreign contacts: one of her sisters was married to an Italian military attaché, and their mother also lived in Italy.
In 1953, the details of Simonich-Kulik’s murder came to light during the investigation of Beria and his accomplices, but this bizarre story was published only in the 1990s.44 Apparently, Beria ordered Merkulov and a group of NKVD operatives to kidnap Kulik’s wife on a Moscow street. After Beria and Merkulov interrogated her in the NKVD, she was executed without trial. During interrogations Beria and the others claimed that the operation was ordered ‘from above’, meaning by Stalin.
In November 1941 Stalin ordered Stavka member and deputy NKO Commissar Kulik to restore order in the Crimea—an impossible mission at the time.45 After Kulik’s predictable defeat in the Crimea, he reported to Stalin: ‘The army had turned into a gang! All they did was drink and rape women. I had no chance of defending Kerch with such an army. I arrived too late; it was impossible to save the situation.’46 Kulik was tried by a special session of the Supreme Court and demoted to major general, dismissed from the post of deputy NKO Commissar, and deprived of all military awards. In vain he appealed to Stalin in a long letter, saying: ‘If I am a wrecker [as accused under Article 58-7] and conducting underground work, I should be shot. If I am not, I ask you to punish the slanderers.’47 Stalin did not answer. Later Kulik commanded various formations and was promoted to lieutenant general, but then demoted to major general again. Finally, in 1947, after being arrested for anti-Soviet conversations, he was sentenced to death and executed in August 1950.
Other 1941 Cases
After the Pavlov Case, military counterintelligence seems to have gone somewhat out of control. Numerous arrests of commanders of all ranks, including generals, followed at the Western and other fronts. Many of them were sentenced under paragraphs 193-17b (abuse of power) and 193-20a (surrender of troops), and executed (Appendix I, see http://www.smershbook.com). In Moscow, Mikheev’s deputy, A. N. Klykov, reported to Beria about one of Stalin’s favorites, Marshal Semyon Budennyi, commander of the Southwestern Front and Timoshenko’s deputy.48 The report accused Budennyi of spying simultaneously for British, Polish, Italian, and German intelligence. These accusations were so obviously ridiculous that the report went no further. However, two months later Timoshenko was dismissed as deputy Commissar and appointed commander of the Southwestern Front instead of Budennyi, while Budennyi became commander of the Reserve Front (in existence only until October 1941).
Incredibly, on July 16, 1941, Mikheev even denounced NKO Commissar Timoshenko, pointing to Timoshenko’s connection with the previously executed military leaders.49 Timoshenko was not arrested, but on July 19, 1941, Stalin himself became NKO Commissar, while Timoshenko was demoted to a post as Stalin’s deputy. The same day Mikheev was made head of the 3rd Department of the Southwestern Front, and two months later he was killed in action while trying to break through a Nazi encirclement. He was one of 3,725 osobisty killed and 3,092 missing in action between June 22, 1941 and March 1, 1943.50
Later Abakumov’s investigators continued to collect compromising materials on Timoshenko. In 1953, General Boris Teplinsky wrote a letter from a labor camp to Marshal Aleksandr Vasilevsky: ‘While having been in prison [in Moscow]… [the investigators] offered me the chance to play a role of a provocateur against Marshal Timoshenko because I was a cell mate of his former deputy, Major General F. S. Ivanov [arrested in 1942, released in 1946]… After I refused, the investigation of my case stopped… For the next 9 years I had no idea about my future fate.’51
Notes
1. Text of Zhukov’s speech written on May 19, 1956 (Zhukov has never made the speech). Published in Vasilii Soima, Zapreshchennyi Stalin (Moscow: Olma-Press, 2005), 411–28 (in Russian).
2. A. I. Mikoyan, Tak bylo. Razmyshleniya o minuvshem (Moscow: Vagrius, 1999), 389–90 (in Russian).
3. Joint decree of the Sovnarkom’s Presidium and Central Committee, dated June 30, 1941. Details in Yurii Gor’kov, Gosudarstvennyi Komitet Oborony postanovlyaet (1941–1945). Tsifry, dokumenty (Moscow: Olma-Press, 2002), 30–41 (in Russian).
4. On February 3, 1942, Mikoyan and Voznesensky were added, and then Kaganovich (on February 20, 1942) and Nikolai Bulganin (on November 22, 1944). Voroshilov was expelled when Bulganin was included; Bulganin was also promoted to NKO deputy Commissar.
5. Politburo decision P34/99 and Joint decree of the Sovnarkom’s Presidium and Central Committee, both dated June 23, 1941. Document No. 175 in Lubyanka. Stalin i NKVD–NKGB–GUKR, 289, and Document No. 8 in Gor’kov, Gosudarstvennyi Komitet Oborony, 494. The function and coordination of the work of the Stavka, General Staff, GKO and Stalin’s control of the whole structure is described in detail in S. M. Shtemenko, General’nyi shtab v gody voiny (Moscow: Voenizdat, 1989), Part I, Chapter 7, and Part 2, Chapters 1 and 8 (in Russian).