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".