Then in 1937/8, in the middle of rapid expansion, Stalin forced the Red Army through a major backward step in the bloody purge that he inflicted on its leadership. Most commanding officers down to the level of corps commanders were executed; altogether, more than twenty thousand officers were discharged after arrest or expulsion from the party. Stalin carried out the purge because he feared the potential for a fifth column to develop in the armed forces, as in other structures of Soviet society, that would emerge in wartime to collaborate with an adversary and hand over the key to the gates.[43]He determined to destroy this possibility in advance by savage repression. He believed that this would leave the army and society better prepared for war.
Stalin succeeded in that the purge turned the army's command staff, terrorised and morally broken, into his absolutely obedient instrument. At the same time, while continuing to grow rapidly in numbers, it declined further in quality. Officer recruitment and training had to fill thousands of new posts and at the same time replace thousands ofempty ones. The mass promotions that resulted had a strongly accidental character; they placed many competent but poorly qualified soldiers in commanding positions and many incompetent ones beside them. Bad leadership brought falling morale amongst the rank and file. The army paid heavily for incompetent military leadership at war with Finland in 1939/40, and more heavily still in the June 1941 invasion.
The backward step that the Red Army took in 1937 was expressed in its organisation and thinking. Organisationally, Stalin sought to compensate for officers' collapsing prestige and competence by returning to the model of dual command: in 1937 military commanders again lost their undivided authority to issue orders, which had to be countersigned by the corresponding politruk (political commissar). Unified command was restored in 1940; then, in the military chaos of 1941 followingthe German invasion, Stalin once more returned to the politruk system, finally restoring unified command in the military reforms of 1942.
In military thinking the Red Army also took a step back, marked by a return to the cult of the offensive. The main reason was Stalin's fear of defeatist tendencies in the armed forces; since retreat was the first stage of defeat, his logic ran, the easiest way to identify defeatism was to connect it with plans for Tukhachevskii's 'deep battle', which envisaged meeting the enemy's invasion by stepping back and regrouping before launching a counter-offensive. Thus, the advocates of operations in depth were accused of conspiring with Nazi leaders to hand over territory. As a result, when war broke out many officers found it easier to surrender to the Wehrmacht than to retreat against Stalin's orders.
Soviet military plans for an enemy attack became dominated by crude notions of frontier defence involving an immediate counter-offensive that would take the battle to the enemy's territory. Stalin now hoped to deter German aggression by massing Soviet forces on the frontier, apparently ready to attack. This was a dangerous bluff; it calmed fears and stimulated complacency in Moscow, while observers in Berlin were not taken in. The revived cult of the offensive also had consequences for the economy The planned war mobilisation of industry was based on a short offensive campaign and a quick victory Threats of air attack and territorial loss could not be discussed while such fears were equated with treason. As a result, air defence and the dispersal of industry from vulnerable frontier regions were neglected.
Stalin was surprised and shocked when Hitler launched his invasion. Having convinced himselfthat Hitler would not invade, he had rejected several warnings received through diplomatic and intelligence channels, believing them to be disinformation. When the invasion came, he was slow to react and slow to adapt. Better anticipation might not have prevented considerable territorial losses but could have saved millions of soldiers from the encirclements that resulted in captivity and death. After the war there was tension between Stalin and his generals over how they should share the credit for final victory and blame for early defeats. In 1941 Stalin covered his own responsibility for misjudging Hitler's plans by shooting several generals. The army had its revenge in 1956 when Khrushchev caricatured Stalin planning wartime military operations on a globe.
The war completed the Red Army's transition to a modern fighting force, but the process was complicated and there were more backward steps before progress was resumed. As commander-in-chief, Stalin improvised a high command, the Stavka, and took detailed control of military operations. He demanded ceaseless counter-attacks, regardless of circumstances, and indeed, in the circumstances of the time, when field communications were inoperative and strategic co-ordination did not exist, there was often no alternative to unthinking resistance on the lines of'death before surrender'. This gave rise to episodes of both legendary heroism and despicable brutality. Overtime Stalin ceded more and more operational command to his generals while keeping control of grand strategy.
For a time the army threatened to become de-professionalised again. Reservists were called up en masse and sent to the front with minimal training. More than 30 million men and women were mobilised in total. The concepts of a territorial militia and voluntary motivation were promoted by recruiting 'home guard' detachments in the towns threatened by enemy occupation. These were pitched into defensive battle, lightly armed and with a few hours' training, and most were killed. The few survivors were eventually integrated into the Red Army. At the same time, partisan armies grew on the occupied territories behind German lines, sometimes based on the remnants of Red Army units cut offin the retreat; these, too, were gradually brought under the control of the General Staff. Once the tide had turned and the Red Army began to recover occupied territory, it refilled its ranks by scooping up able-bodied men remaining in the towns and villages on the way. Offsetting these were high levels of desertion that persisted in 1943 and 1944, even after the war's outcome was certain.
The annihilating losses of 1941 and 1942 instituted a vicious cycle of rapid replacement with ever-younger and less-experienced personnel who suffered casualties and loss of equipment at dreadful rates. This affected the whole army, including the officer corps. At the end of the war most commanding officers still lacked a proper military education, and most units were still commanded by officers whose level of responsibility exceeded their substantive rank.
In the end, three things saved the Red Army. First, at each level enough of its units included a core of survivors who, after the baptism of fire, had acquired enough battlefield experience to hold the unit together and teach new recruits to live longer. Second, in 1941 and the summer of 1942, when the army's morale was cracking, Stalin shored it up with merciless discipline. In October 1942 he followed this with reforms that finally abolished dual command by the political commissars and restored a number of traditional gradations of rank and merit. Third, the economy did not collapse; Soviet industry was mobilised and poured out weapons at a higher rate than Germany. As a result, despite atrocious losses and wastage of equipment, the Soviet soldier of 1942 was already better equipped than the soldier he faced in armament, though not yet in rations, kit or transport. In 1943 and 1944 this advantage rose steadily.
43
Oleg Khlevniuk, 'The Objectives of the Great Terror, 1937-1938', in Julian Cooper, Maureen Perrie and E. A. Rees (eds.),