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SOVIET GENERALS

YOUNG FIGHTING MEN CONTINUITY IN COMMAND. CONSOLIDATION OF RUSSIAN ARMY. To the, general public the leaders of the great Soviet military machine are hardly even names, writes the military correspondent of the “Sydney Morning Herald." The many drastic purges removed most of the betterknown figures, and they were replaced by soldiers unfamiliar to the outside world, while power fell even from such traditional figures as the cavalryleader, Budenny, the most romanticised of the Red soldiers, who became local commander at Moscow. Since the last great service purge of 1938, however, there has been more continuity in command. Today the Red Army is controlled by three men —Marshals Voroshilov and Timoshenko and General Zhukov.

(General Budenny has been appointed to command the Ukrainian and Bessarabian fronts since this article was written).

After Trotsky's preliminary work, the consolidation of the Russian Army was the care of Voroshilov and Tukachevsky. Born in 1881, Klement Voroshilov was a factory worker who, at the age of 36, showed innate military ability during the Civil Wars as commander of the Tenth and Fourteenth Ukrainian Armies. As commander of the Kharkhov Military District, he laid the foundations for the present defence system of the Ukraine. With Budenny he was one of the creators of the famous Red Cavalry. From 1925 to 1940 he was Commissar for Defence, and it was during those years that the Red Army attained its present structure.

VOROSHILOV’S POLICY. Much of the detailed organisation, however, was due to his deputy commissioner, Tukachevsky. who, with seven other - generals, was executed in June, 1937, for alleged pro-German affiliations. Voroshilov’s reputation was not enhanced by his conduct of the Russo-Finnish War, and a general reshuffle occurred in May, 1940, two months after the cessation of hostilities in Finland. Voroshilov was relieved of his post as commissar, and became president of the newly-ap-pointed Committee of Defence, and assistant to Molotov. This was thought to amount to his supercession, but last week he appeared as one of the five members of the inner Cabal, known as the State Defence Committee, which is to assume executive control of the war with Germany. Voroshilov is Russia’s leading protagonist of mechanisation and a strong believer in such methods of “indirect tactical offence” as the scorched-earth policy. When he was relieved of his duties as commissar many outside military experts believed that he had differed from, those who wished to place all reliance on a stand at the actual frontier; and, if this be so, events have justified his theory of a policy based on depthdefence.

On May 8, 1940, Marshal Semyon Timoshenko replaced Voroshilov as Commissar for Defence and Comman-der-in-Chief of the Red Army. He was one of the original Ukrainian cavalrymen, and, like so many of the present Red commanders, graduated from the cavalry to motorised formations. He always preached a war of mobility, and military writers term him “a neo-cavalry tactician,” meaning by this that he has adapted the extremely unconventional cavalry tactics of Budenny to the more rapid tempo of machine-warfare. In the internecine quarrels of the Soviet regime he attached himself to Voroshilov, as against Tukachevsky, and bitterly opposed those Red staff-officers who wanted to follow too blindly the German precepts of war.

ORGANISER AND POLITICIAN. Timoshenko led the Russian forces during the occupation of East Poland in 1939 and secured an entirely unearned kudos, because the actual fighting against the demoralised and trapped Poles was negligible. Timoshenko thus became the outstanding figure in the curious politico-military world of Soviet Russia, and fortunately for himself he incurred none of the criticisms in the subsequent Finnish War. Voroshilov had insisted upon assuming direct personal control of the war, and thus became responsible for the original miscalculations; while Timoshenko gained a still higher reputation for organising the later and successful stages of the campaign, in his capacity as Chairman of the Defence Commissariat and Vice-Premier, a post to which he was appointed at the last session of the Supreme Soviet. The actual reorganisation of the Red Army in the latter part of 1940, incorporating the lessons of the Finnish War, was primarily his work. Like most Ukrainians, Timoshenko loves the political game, and for many years he represented the Ukrainian peasants in Moscow. Indeed, he has derived much publicity from his “earthiness,” and is very popular as a leader who has retained direct contacts with the peasantry. He is probably a better organiser than a commander in the field, and he is not supposed to possess Voroshilov’s gifts as a strategist.

GENERAL ZHUKOV. The actual operational leader of the Red Army is General Zhukov, a young man of 41, whose reputation has* been earned in the last few years rather

than in the Civil Wars and in the formative stages of the Red Army. The Russian system provides an opportunity for the rapid promotion of young officers, and two ' “easterners” have pressed to the fore. Generals Stern and Zhukov. Both of these gained much publicity for their tactical outwitting of the Japanese in the frontier incidents of 1938-39, especially after Changkufeng. But Stern’s star waned after his disastrous methods in the Karelian Isthmus in January, 1940, while that of his rival, Zhukov, the tank expert, rapidly rose. After the Finnish War Zhukov became a full general, and as such led

the Red forces into Bessarabia last year. He became commander of the Ukraine Military District, with his headquarters at Kiev. Here he was in charge of the fortification scheme that converted the Ukraine into a “special military district,” and was so successful that, in the general army reorganisation of February 24 of this year, he was brought north to become Chief of Staff and a ViceCommissar for Defence under Timoshenko, replacing General Meretskov, who was relegated to the lesser task of controlling military education. Zhukov has always been a soldier. He represents the younger school of professional officer for whom a way was opened after the great purge of 1938. He disapproves of political interference in actual military operations, especially the kind of interference to which Zhdanov, the leader of the Leningrad district, resorted during the Finnish campaign. He is bitterly anti-German, holding German influence responsible for the political dry-rot that crept into the Red Army in the latter years of the Tukachev-sky-Patna-Üborevich regime. His deputy, General Solokov now leads the Russian Military Mission to England, and is also known to be a “full-time professional,” looking upon soldiering as a task divorced from politics.

RED NAVY OFFICERS. The Timoshenko-Zhukov school stands for the “total” regimentation of the country behind a great military striking force. Thus in Russia today, while there is a Defence Commissar and a Navy Commissar (but no separate Air Commissar), there are co-equal Commissars for Aeronautical Industry, Heavy Machine Building, Light Machine Building, Military Equipment, Munitions, and several Supply departments. This splitting-up process has been most pronounced since January, 1939, the aim being to organise the industrial background of the war machine. The position of the Red Navy is far less clear than that of the Army. A separate Commissar for the Navy was set up in 1939, but the Naval Commissars Sinernov and Fremovsky were unsatisfactory, and the lag led to the appointment of Admiral Kuznezov as Naval Commissar in April, 1939. The naval purge of February, 1938, when the former Commander-in-Chief Orlov, and the head of the Baltic Fleet (Admiral Sirkov) were executed, led to a feeling of uncertainty for some considerable time, until Admirals Kuznezov and Isakov restored morale, and arranged for the existing expansionist programme. Kuzenov is untried, and his views on air power as against sea power seem to indicate a strangely conservative viewpoint. However, he has fought unremittingly to bring the Red Navy up to the strength of the land and air forces, and he has ended the long period of drift when the Navy was the Soviet’s “Cinderella of the Services.”

Permanent link to this item
Hononga pūmau ki tēnei tūemi

https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/newspapers/WAITA19410822.2.69

Bibliographic details
Ngā taipitopito pukapuka

Wairarapa Times-Age, 22 August 1941, Page 6

Word count
Tapeke kupu
1,314

SOVIET GENERALS Wairarapa Times-Age, 22 August 1941, Page 6

SOVIET GENERALS Wairarapa Times-Age, 22 August 1941, Page 6

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