How damaging was the 1937 Soviet officer Purge?

How damaging was the 1937 Soviet officer Purge?

  • Very damaging

    Votes: 116 75.8%
  • Somewhat damaging

    Votes: 30 19.6%
  • Wasn't damaging

    Votes: 0 0.0%
  • Was actually helpful

    Votes: 7 4.6%

  • Total voters
    153

elkarlo

Banned
Ditto. I've seen a couple of Russians argue the purges were not political and aimed at improving leadership.
Wow. I could agree if the prunes were fairly limited. Maybe going after a small group that was opposed to something. But to purge basically the entire officer corps? They're very lucky they didn't lose on 41, very lucky.
 
Wow. I could agree if the prunes were fairly limited. Maybe going after a small group that was opposed to something. But to purge basically the entire officer corps? They're very lucky they didn't lose on 41, very lucky.

These things are very hard to manage and, unfortunately, the discovery of actual 'small group' can only accelerate the assertiveness to find the big ones (real or imaginable).
 
Soviet deep battle doctrine had already been demonstrated effectively against the Japanese. So clearly the Red Army could still perform well despite the purges.
The deep battle concept was thrown out of Soviet military strategy as it was associated with the denounced figures that created it and later adopted it again fully in late 41 and it had a series of problems until it was "ironed out" in mid-1943. Early application of the theory would underestimate the mass needed to effect penetrations. At the divisional level, Soviet Rifle groups would often be attacking on too broad a front, and it would require several attacks by multiple echelons to achieve penetration. This would be both time consuming and costly, and allow the Germans to move reserves into positions of concentration from which to seal off Soviet breakthroughs before they could become problematic.
 
I have to express a separate opinion that although repressions did considerable damage to the armed forces of the USSR before the war, it should also be understood that the level of paranoia and mistrust of the army within the USSR increased after certain events in a certain country of the Iberian Peninsula, and the phrase "well,guys, we surely do have a very reliable officer corps and there cannot be any conspiracies inside" could not be anymore flatly accepted by the country's leadership -- year 1936 showed that you actually can be caught sleeping and miss the military coup blooming.

*snip*

This and the follow up posts smell like acceptance of Stalinist paranoia and apologia. I don't buy it. The Soviet Union wasn't Spain and the Soviet leadership strikes me as very much intelligent enough to recognize that they weren't Spain. Your characterization of quite competent and professional men like Tukhachevsky and Yakir (who did not remotely encourage the sort of political independence in his forces that you indicate he did) as well as claims that the Red Air Force hadn't "bothered with general question" in 1930-37, despite Lapinchsky doing just that in 1930, are likewise rather suspect.

The deep battle concept was thrown out of Soviet military strategy

More like "thrown into Limbo" then "completely thrown out". The term was banned and further work ceased until (as you noted) the war began, but all the previously introduced concepts remained in the instruction manuals and what-have-you.
 

Deleted member 1487

More like "thrown into Limbo" then "completely thrown out". The term was banned and further work ceased until (as you noted) the war began, but all the previously introduced concepts remained in the instruction manuals and what-have-you.
Isserson wrote critical elements of Deep Battle doctrine in 1940 as part of a book looking into the Polish campaign (New Forms of Combat [An Essay Researching Modern Wars]).
 
Isserson wrote critical elements of Deep Battle doctrine in 1940 as part of a book looking into the Polish campaign (New Forms of Combat [An Essay Researching Modern Wars]).

I was aware that there were adjustments to Soviet doctrine in 1940-41 in response to both the Red Army's recent experiences in Poland, the Baltics, Finland, and the Far East as well as watching German actions but I'm given to understand that the use of the term "Deep Operations" or "Deep Battle" was still verboten at the time. My personal favorite anecdote is the Red Army abruptly realizing that it's that the old AT densities laid out in the 1937 manual (of 6 to 9 guns per kilometer) were too thin and ordered them to be more then doubled (to 20 to 25 guns per kilometer) but the new instructions were only published in April 1941 and there was zero time to train the officers in the new standards before the German attack, so the Soviets kept deploying their AT guns according to the old standards until far into 1942 and even then inconsistently so until mid-1943.

For comparison, the ATG operational densities during Citadel was 23.7 guns per kilometer of front so the Red Army was clearly already back in going towards the right direction by the Spring of '41, it just didn't have the time to finish training personnel and get the new equipment out.
 
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Deleted member 1487

I was aware that there were adjustments to Soviet doctrine in 1940-41 in response to both the Red Army's recent experiences in Poland, the Baltics, Finland, and the Far East as well as watching German actions but I'm given to understand that the use of the term "Deep Operations" or "Deep Battle" was still verboten at the time. My personal favorite anecdote is the Red Army abruptly realizing that it's that the old AT densities laid out in the 1937 manual (of 6 to 9 guns per kilometer) were too thin and ordered them to be more then doubled (to 20 to 25 guns per kilometer) but the new instructions were only published in April 1941 and there was zero time to train the officers in the new standards before the German attack, so the Soviets kept deploying their AT guns according to the old standards until far into 1942 and even then inconsistently so until mid-1943.

For comparison, the ATG operational densities during Citadel was 23.7 guns per kilometer of front so the Red Army was clearly already back in going towards the right direction by the Spring of '41, it just didn't have the time to finish training personnel and get the new equipment out.
The term probably was, but the doctrine was still being developed by theorists.
Was the AT gun deployment perhaps also a function of too few guns? A certain Russian on that other forum did mention that there was a shortage of AP shells even in 1943 with 76mm division gun units, while given losses in 1941-42 replacements were still pretty hand to mouth; Kursk concentrations then were the result of knowing German plans and materially emphasizing that part of the front.

Based on Isserson's work, from what I can find of it in English, he pretty accurately predicted how things would go in 1941 if Stalin didn't act to prepare...which he didn't.
 
Was the AT gun deployment perhaps also a function of too few guns? A certain Russian on that other forum did mention that there was a shortage of AP shells even in 1943 with 76mm division gun units, while given losses in 1941-42 replacements were still pretty hand to mouth; Kursk concentrations then were the result of knowing German plans and materially emphasizing that part of the front.

A little of column A and a little of column B. At the start of Barbarossa, the Russians had the guns but were neither trained nor deployed to the standards and so lost a lot of them to the subsequent encirclements. The losses were so bad that even consistently coherent first defensive positions weren't able to be established until November. By the summer of '42, they had production re-established and were getting more then enough guns out but many of the officers were still in the process of training on the new standards so the defensive average still tended to be lower then mandated. The problem even popped up as late as Third Kharkov and was a minor contributing factor to the defeat there.
 
Might be useful to dig out the details and compare Marshals purge of the US Army/National Guard officers 1939-42. When Marshal was appointed US Army CoS in 1939 he was jumped over 40+ senior officers. Most of those were retired within two years & only a few dozen of the Brigadier, Major, and Lt Generals on the active lists in the Regular Army, Army Reserve, and National Guard made it into 1942. Of the 17,000+ regular Army, 60,000+ Army Reserve, and 30,000 National Guard officers of all ranks on the lists in 1939 a full quarter were out by 1942. Medical reasons, critical civilian employment, legal action, and 'good of the service' caused thousands of the original cadre to be replaced with fresh new untrained Lieutenants, or former sergeants newly commissioned.
 
Might be useful to dig out the details and compare Marshals purge of the US Army/National Guard officers 1939-42. When Marshal was appointed US Army CoS in 1939 he was jumped over 40+ senior officers. Most of those were retired within two years & only a few dozen of the Brigadier, Major, and Lt Generals on the active lists in the Regular Army, Army Reserve, and National Guard made it into 1942. Of the 17,000+ regular Army, 60,000+ Army Reserve, and 30,000 National Guard officers of all ranks on the lists in 1939 a full quarter were out by 1942. Medical reasons, critical civilian employment, legal action, and 'good of the service' caused thousands of the original cadre to be replaced with fresh new untrained Lieutenants, or former sergeants newly commissioned.

But were they discovered to always have been Nazis, State Shinto followers, and Communists?

GLORY GLORY GLORY TO THE GREAT ROOSEVELT, FIRST MARSHAL OF THE WORLD NEW DEAL!!!
 
... My personal favorite anecdote is the Red Army abruptly realizing that it's that the old AT densities laid out in the 1937 manual (of 6 to 9 guns per kilometer) were too thin and ordered them to be more then doubled (to 20 to 25 guns per kilometer) but the new instructions were only published in April 1941 and there was zero time to train the officers in the new standards before the German attack, so the Soviets kept deploying their AT guns according to the old standards until far into 1942 and even then inconsistently so until mid-1943. ...

Buried on my shelf is a analysis of the Red Army field artillery 1937-43. Its only a few pages but traces how the dilution of the well trained 1937 artillery cadre caused by 1941 a severe loss of basic artillery competency. In simplistic terms they lost the ability to execute indirect long range fire. This contributed to the severe defeats and losses of 1941. Several remedial actions were taken, the analysis focused on that taken by the senior artillery commander of the Moscow Front. 1. All the heavy and most medium cannon of the divisions and corps were consolidated at the army and front level, where they could be controlled by the fw remaining staff with in depth artillery skills. 2. The 76.2mm cannon and six 122mm cannon remaining in the infantry division were restricted to direct fire only, and range restricted. The 76.2mm cannon crews were prohibited from attacking anything at a range of more than 1200 meters. 3. The training/field priority was on entrenchment & camouflage of the gun positions. These actions taken in the late autumn of 1941 on the Moscow Front gave the cannon crews and their officers a mission set they could easily understand and cope with.

This alteration of the deployment and tactics of the division artillery on the Moscow front related to aforementioned problem of AT gun density. The orders for the divisions field artillery placed it along side and/or imeaditaly to the rear of the AT gun positions. In practical terms increased the density of cannon in the forward battle zone, with cannon capable of defeating the armor of the German tanks of 1941. Aside from reducing losses to the division artillery on the Moscow Front, the entrenched, camouflaged, and direct firing cannon thickened the AT fires. They also added HE ammunition to the AT zone which served to suppress and neutralize the motorized infantry accompanying the tanks, thus supplementing the MG supporting the AT guns.

This emergency solution adopted on the Moscow Front was adopted in varying degrees on other Fronts. As schools and training revived in 1942 the division artillery recovered the ability to execute long range fires. However at Kursk in 1943 one can see the concept has not been discarded. A portion of the light 76.2mm field cannons were deployed in entrenched/camoflaged positions to cover and supplement the AT guns with direct supporting fires against the enemy tank/infantry teams.
 
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I'm missing your point :confused:

I think it’s just a joke referring to a comparison between the ostensible reasons someone got fired in the US Army’s purges to the ostensible reasons someone in the Soviet ones got arrested or shot. The latter tended to have a lot more “secret enemies of the ruling ideology” given then the former.
 
If that was so, why did the Red Army bring back as many officers from the GULAG as possible after the German invasion? I remember a General Rokossovsky who'd been in the camps, pretty roughly handled. Stalin got him out, cleaned him up, and made him an army (three divisions, equal maybe to a US corps) commander. Rokossovsky stayed out of the camps, finished as a marshal, became a Defense Minister of postwar Poland.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Konstantin_Rokossovsky

One of many questions not addressed in that conversation.

To digress, a 'Army' in the Red Army organization of 1942-45 was closer to a US organization of the same name, than to a US or Commonwealth Corps. While the infantry 'divisions' in the Soviet ground forces were in practical terms much smaller than US or British groups of that name a Red Army 'Army' had support forces and service groups that considerably outweighed a US Army corps. What confuses the issue is how in the winter of 1941/42 the Red Army dissolved its existing corps organizations. Desperate to form capable HQ staff they redistributed the HQ staff, technicians, equipment, transport of the corps HQ to the divisions and army HQ. The Corps as a entity in the Red Army pretty much disappeared from the mass of armies. It was still used to designate some groups of cavalry, tank, motor rifle, or airborne formations. Post 1945 its use was further reduced and I saw the term used only occasionally to refer to a sort of task force that was to large to be a 'division' but much to small to call a 'army'.

Back when I was paid to think about these things I found that labeling Soviet or Red Army combat units with US Army appellations could distort or confuse understanding of doctrine and tactics. I gradually made a habit of thinking of a formation of a certain size by the Russian word or some other label. That reduced a bad habit of trying to hammer a square peg of a Soviet unit into the square hole of a US Army unit label.
 
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elkarlo

Banned
These things are very hard to manage and, unfortunately, the discovery of actual 'small group' can only accelerate the assertiveness to find the big ones (real or imaginable).
Of course. Also under these circumstances, one would probably figuratively sing. Which woukd as you said, widen how far it went. This is scalpel surgery done with a chainsaw
 
This and the follow up posts smell like acceptance of Stalinist paranoia and apologia. I don't buy it. The Soviet Union wasn't Spain and the Soviet leadership strikes me as very much intelligent enough to recognize that they weren't Spain. Your characterization of quite competent and professional men like Tukhachevsky and Yakir (who did not remotely encourage the sort of political independence in his forces that you indicate he did) as well as claims that the Red Air Force hadn't "bothered with general question" in 1930-37, despite Lapinchsky doing just that in 1930, are likewise rather suspect.

I was not trying to whitewash Stalin's bloodshed, to be honest, but rather display it as managerial and executive task, failed managerial task because of the very questionable nature of this decision. It's a dark matter - I think that someone really started to push up the "cults" of Uborevich in Belarus and Yakir in Kiev among the troops. This is clarified by the post-1956 memoirs of Sarra Yakir (Yakir's wife) and Vladzimira Uborevich (Uborevich's daughter), they mentioned this cult among the troops to show how close to the people and to ordinary soldiers were Uborevich and Yakir. But in the days of Stalin and pre-war anxiety, I think, such manifestations of open support for specific military leaders (Uborevich called the Belarus military district "My Army" in the Moscow meeting in 1932 and was severely screwed up by Voroshilov - "not yours, comrade Uborevich, but part of the Red Army") could not end good. I think they were suspected of serious separatism. He had been in the same place for too long, had the required connections, yes-men and sycophants were around him and suspicions were strong and so on and so on. I do not want to tell you it was good and that Stalin was right all along, I just want to say that it was serious situation and in the conditions of a lack of information, many of us, planted in the chairs of the leaders of the state, probably would not have acted the most profitable or frankly not the best way.

As @elkarlo said above - the chainsaw instead of the scalpel. Chainsaw instead of a scalpel is very bad indeed, but still you can not say that the only and sole reason for everything happened was the paranoid paranoia of the insane Stalin.

What about actual military talents of Uborevich, this may be issue of taste. For example, the work of Uborevich for fortification building in Belarus: Karbyshev criticized it to bits, and this opinion is valuable because it was said before the beginning of the period of repression, and is somehow independent opinion. But surely he was one of the most active, which was good.

If speaking about repressions in army as whole, we must said how genie got out of the bottle.

Stalin initially wanted to sweep the "fifth column" on the experience of Spanish events. Wanted to create lists of disadvantaged elements in the army, which could not have been 100% trusted in cause of a severe war. That is, they prepared lists of those who should be especially carefully monitored in the event of hostilities in order to take action if needed. But they could not stop the flywheel later.

NKVD immediately reported that there were also "especially disadvantaged", "ready to conspiracy", "ready to revolt" and these "conspirators" should, say, be taken into custody right now or never. Look, here it is - "the conspiracy of the military"! We must act NOOOOOW! Go, go, go! And here the nightmare begins.

The situation is independent from mass repressions, certain military cases started in 1936 but it just coincided very well: it was not only the Marshals and upper military staff who had to be cleaned, but also all their people at all levels, set up personally by him. The Army in the USSR in the early 1930s was very clan-system based and built on personal devotion - on the absurd level, like"we, the troops of Comrade Uborevich, swear with the great leader to defend Soviet Belarus" (again, this is the official text of the oath in the Belarusian military district in 1930th).

Well, in general, it went out of the bottle and went badly. Plots began to be discovered right now - security forces began to compete "who can find out more", and then suddenly everyone became scared that you are hiding someone. And a powerful and uncontrollable shaft of "initiatives from below" went. This wave of initiatives from below in the end absorbed many, including partly the initiators of the 'discovery of non-existent conspiracies'. At the end, army was gutted as it was said before.

But the soil was well prepared with all the work, which was conducted until 1936. Military responded very badly to criticism, the military preferred to share problems with troops only within their small circles; at the same annual meetings of the People's Commissariat of Defense, questions were raised every year about how to achieve real numbers and real indicators. "Statistics mistreatment, fraud, distortion of reality, failure to provide a realistic situation", as I said before.

They tried to lower their positions, tried to conduct educational work, tried to move them into civil service -- and each approach was not good. Or we get angry military men who were removed from the prestigious service and forced to engage in, in their opinion, stigmatized and shameful civil work. Or we obtain only the formal consent of the military districts with the center, and the continuation of non-control of the outskirts of the country. Either we are trying a massive drop of officers in rank below - and we get mass discontent by the thrown out and, moreover, we get the discontent of those to whom these drowned shut the path to rise.

I will say again, if you read such a piece of material as meeting minutes of the annual meetings of the military council at the People's Commissariat of Defense in 1934, when nobody was speaking about the repressions yet, then you can see what the problem of discipline in the troops was initially gently dealt with. But the behavior of the senior officers at the time of the commission's work were divided into two types: either they began to cry and tell how everyone was drunk and did not engage in educational work, not only them, either they were silent and snoring, openly stating that the Soviet government would not live without officers, so feeling themselves irreplaceable and immortal.

All this was packed in a very tight cluster of problems that affected the pre-war cleansing of the army and led it to such a terrible end. Comrade Stalin's approaches were not good, but he had grounds to start work on sifting the army - another question that he did not manage with this work either and failed it, allowing these sifting to be done with chainsaw.

There was a certain course of events, successive actions at each stage of which seemed correct and logical - but as a result, everything turned round.

The result of such a purge under those conditions was quite predictable (for a modern man). Or it was necessary to organize it somehow very correctly, which was not possible.

It turned out a very bloody hodgepodge, each element of which individually can be quickly fixed only if other elements do not aggravate the matter.

Terror began to subside only after the main executioners became self-shuttered (as in Revolutionary France in due time) - after that it was possible to "establish law".
 
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One Russian commenter has posted that a lot of the officers purged in 1937-1941 were superannuated holdovers from the Russian Civil War, and therefore no great loss.

I think one should differentiate between the injustice of mass purges and executions, and damaging effects of those actions on the army. To be blunt, just because an action is done for the wrong reasons does not mean it will have bad effects.

OTOH, I recall reading (in Zhukov's memoir?) that in 1941-1942, he continually encountered commanders who had been promoted to replace purged superiors and didn't understand their new responsibilities. Though if it was Zhukov's memoir then it would have been slanted to denigrate Stalin, as it was published after 1953 IIRC.
 
... NKVD immediately reported that there were also "especially disadvantaged", "ready to conspiracy", "ready to revolt" and these "conspirators" should, say, be taken into custody right now or never. Look, here it is - "the conspiracy of the military"! We must act NOOOOOW! Go, go, go! And here the nightmare begins.

This was one important difference in Marshals purge & the Red Army purge. The US had no organization with the weight of the NKVD. The FBI was tiny and had little interest in the internal politics of the military officers. Interest in the political reliability of officers of German or Italian birth or ancestry gained no traction and foreign born Generals like Kruger never accrued enough suspicion to prevent their rise to senior command. The panic over the Japanese resulted in a 'purge' of those from Army service for a year, but that was relatively isolated & confined to a very small group.

They tried to lower their positions, tried to conduct educational work, tried to move them into civil service -- and each approach was not good. Or we get angry military men who were removed from the prestigious service and forced to engage in, in their opinion, stigmatized and shameful civil work. Or we obtain only the formal consent of the military districts with the center, and the continuation of non-control of the outskirts of the country. Either we are trying a massive drop of officers in rank below - and we get mass discontent by the thrown out and, moreover, we get the discontent of those to whom these drowned shut the path to rise.

This is a more interesting point concerning the US Army, and Navy officers, Many were very unhappy about their discharge. That there were considerable economic opportunities for them helped defuse the anger. During the previous decade US military pay had been very poor. The demand for their organizational skills meant most double or tripled their pay when leaving the military. Others were employed by new civil service positions created to assist in mobilizing US industry for military production. The positions had more status that the typical civil service position.

I will say again, if you read such a piece of material as meeting minutes of the annual meetings of the military council at the People's Commissariat of Defense in 1934, when nobody was speaking about the repressions yet, then you can see what the problem of discipline in the troops was initially gently dealt with. But the behavior of the senior officers at the time of the commission's work were divided into two types: either they began to cry and tell how everyone was drunk and did not engage in educational work, not only them, either they were silent and snoring, openly stating that the Soviet government would not live without officers, so feeling themselves irreplaceable and immortal.

The tiny size of the US Army prevented this problem in most cases. It was relatively easy in the 19th and 20th Centuries to replace officers with capable men. the exception might have been the Quartermasters Corps. The awarding of defense contracts to industry meant the officers if the quartermaster were influenced and protected by Congressmen who sought to place those purchase contracts with business in their districts. This was a problem for Marshal in the early days of the US mobilization in 1940-41. A important step in his purge was the reorganization or 1942 that sidelined the Quartermasters Corps and temporarily reduced Congressional influence in purchasing.

The National Guard was a different matter. A significant portion of the officers were political appointees of the state politicians & their rank had little to do with military skills, or physical fitness for their position. It took a methodical documentation of their failures to purge the unfit and to many were still officers in 1942.

... Terror began to subside only after the main executioners became self-shuttered (as in Revolutionary France in due time) - after that it was possible to "establish law".

The term "self-shuttered" escapes me. Can you clarify this activity?
 
OTOH, I recall reading (in Zhukov's memoir?) that in 1941-1942, he continually encountered commanders who had been promoted to replace purged superiors and didn't understand their new responsibilities. Though if it was Zhukov's memoir then it would have been slanted to denigrate Stalin, as it was published after 1953 IIRC.

Just as Germans generals criticise Hitler for the poor performance of their military in the later period of ww2, so do Russians criticise Stalin.
 
Might be useful to dig out the details and compare Marshals purge of the US Army/National Guard officers 1939-42. When Marshal was appointed US Army CoS in 1939 he was jumped over 40+ senior officers. Most of those were retired within two years & only a few dozen of the Brigadier, Major, and Lt Generals on the active lists in the Regular Army, Army Reserve, and National Guard made it into 1942. Of the 17,000+ regular Army, 60,000+ Army Reserve, and 30,000 National Guard officers of all ranks on the lists in 1939 a full quarter were out by 1942. Medical reasons, critical civilian employment, legal action, and 'good of the service' caused thousands of the original cadre to be replaced with fresh new untrained Lieutenants, or former sergeants newly commissioned.

The thing is that 25% over 3 years with the criteria being competence is vastly different to the purge of the Red Army.

3/5 Marshals
13/15 Army Commanders
8/9 of the senior-most Admirals
50/57 Corps Commanders
154/186 Divisional Commanders

There was a similar level of devastation among the political management of the armed forces but perhaps crucially the big loss of almost 37,000 Army and 3,000 naval officers occurred between May 1937 and September 1938 a vastly compressed time period removing a lot of the opportunity for newcomers to learn the fit of 'dead men's shoes' even before the rapid expansion of the forces with the looming prospect of war exacerbated the chaos. Both forces saw a reduction in available officers but the US focused solely of competence whereas the Soviets had to once again winnow the survivors for such while the Germans were helping weed out the unlucky.
 
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