Another view of Stalin (49 page)

`I warn you for the last time that if you ever fail to do your duty to the GHQ again you will be removed from your post as Chief of General Staff and recalled from the front ....'

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Vasilevsky,  p. 285.

Vasilevsky  was thunderstruck, but was not offended by this `brutality'. On the contrary, he wrote:

`Stalin was just as categorical with other people. He required similar discipline from every representative of the GHQ .... My feeling is that the lack of any indulgence to an GHQ representative was justified in the interests of efficient control of hostilities. Stalin very attentively followed the course of events at the front, quickly reacted to all changes in them and firmly held troop control in his own hands.'

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Ibid. .

As opposed to Khrushchev,  who claimed to have seen an irresponsible and charlatanesque Stalin, Vasilevsky,  who worked for thirty-four months at Stalin's side, analyzed the latter's style of work as follows:

`Stalin paid a great deal of attention to creating an efficient style of work in the GHQ. If we look at the style from autumn 1942, we see it as distinguished by reliance on collective experience in drawing up operational and strategic plans, a high degree of exactingness, resourcefulness, constant contact with the troops and a precise knowledge of the situation at the Fronts.

`Stalin as Supreme High Commander was extremely exacting to all and sundry; a quality that was justified, especially in wartime. He never forgave carelessness in work or failure to finish a job properly'.

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Ibid. , p. 450.

A detailed example convincingly shows how Stalin's `irresponsible leadership methods' really worked. In April 1942, a Red Army offensive to liberate the Crimea failed. The High Command was given orders to stop it and to organize a staggered defence. Twenty-one Soviet divisions faced ten Nazi divisions. But on May 8, the Nazis attacked and broke through the Soviet defence. The High Command representative, Mekhlis,  a close companion of Stalin, sent his report, to which the Supreme Commander responded:

`You are taking a strange position as an outside observer who has no responsibility for the Crimean Front affairs. This position may be convenient but it is utterly disgraceful. You are not some outside observer at the Crimean Front, but the responsible representative of the GHQ, responsible for all the Front's successes and failures and obliged to correct the command's mistakes on the spot. You together with the command are responsible for the Front's left flank being utterly weak. If ``the entire situation showed that the enemy was going to attack that morning'' and you did not take all measures to repel the enemy, just confining yourself to passive criticism, the worse for you.'

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Ibid. , p. 159.

Stalin fully criticized bureaucratic and formalist leadership methods.

`Comrades Kozlov  and Mekhlis  believed that their main job was to issue orders and that issuing orders was all they had to do in controlling the troops. They did not appreciate that the issuing of an order is only the start of work and that the command's chief job is to ensure that an order is implemented, to convey the order to the troops, and to arrange assistance for the troops in carrying out the command's order. As an analysis of the course of operations has shown, the Front command issued their orders without account for the situation at the front, unaware of the real position of the troops. The Front command did not even ensure the delivery of their orders to the armies .... During the critical days of the operation, the Crimean Front command and Comrade Mekhlis  spent their time on longwinded fruitless meetings of the military council instead of personal contact with the Army commanders and personal involvement in the course of operations.

`The task is that our commanders should put an end once and for all to harmful methods of bureaucratic leadership and troop control; they must not confine themselves to issuing orders, but visit the troops, the armies and divisions more often and help their subordinates to carry out the orders. The task is that our commanding staff, commissars and political officers should thoroughly root out elements of indiscipline among commanders of all ranks.'

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Ibid. , p. 161.

During the entire war, Stalin firmly fought against any irresponsible or bureaucratic attitude. He insisted on real presence on the ground.

Stalin, of `mediocre intelligence'

We finish with the third `truth' about Stalin's personality: the brutal and cold man, of mediocre intelligence, with no consideration for his fellow humans and who had nothing but contempt for his aids.

In fact, the men who had to `endure' this monster day after day for those four terrible war years offer a radically different picture of Stalin.

Here is how Zhukov  described his `master':

`Though slight in stature and undistinguished in outward appearance, Stalin was nevertheless an imposing figure. Free of affectation and mannerisms, he won the heart of everyone he spoke to. His visitors were invariable struck by his candour and his uninhibited manner of speaking, and impressed by his ability to express his thoughts clearly, his inborn analytical turn of mind, his erudition and retentive memory, all of which made even old hands and big shots brace themselves and be ``on the alert.'' '

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Zhukov,  op. cit. , p. 283.

`Stalin possessed not only an immense natural intelligence, but also amazingly wide knowledge. I was able to observe his ability to think analytically during sessions of the Party Politburo, the State Defence Committee and during my permanent work in the GHQ. He would attentively listen to speakers, ... sometimes asking questions and making comments. And when the discussion was over he would formulate his conclusions precisely and sum things up.'

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Vasilevsky,  op. cit. , p. 448.

`His tremendous capacity for work, his ability quickly to grasp the meaning of a book, his tenacious memory --- all these enabled him to master, during one day, a tremendous amount of factual data, which could be coped with only by a very gifted man.'

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Zhukov,  op. cit. , p. 283.

Vasilevsky  added to this portrait with a few comments about how Stalin related to other men:

`Stalin ... had a great capacity for organization. He worked very hard himself, but he also could make others work to the full extent of their ability, squeezing from them all that they could offer.'

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Vasilevsky,  op. cit. , p. 452.

`Stalin had an amazingly good memory .... Stalin knew not only all the commanders of the fronts and armies, and there were over a hundred of them, but also several commanders of corps and divisions, as well as the top officials of the People's Defence Commissariat, not to speak of the top personnel of the central and regional Party and state apparatus.'

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Ibid. , p. 451.

In addition, Stalin knew personally a number of builders of aircraft, artillery and tanks; he often convened them and asked of them detailed questions.

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Zhukov,  op. cit. , p. 284.

Stalin's military merits

How should one evaluate the military merits of the man who led the army and the peoples of the Soviet Union during the greatest and most terrible war that history has ever seen?

Here is Khrushchev's  summary:

`Stalin very energetically popularized himself as a great leader .... let us take, for instance, our historical and military films ...; they make us feel sick. Their true objective is the propagation of the theme of praising Stalin as a military genius ....

`Not Stalin, but the party as a whole, the Soviet Government, our heroic Army, its talented leaders and brave soldiers, the whole Soviet nation --- these are the ones who assured the victory in the Great Patriotic War. (Tempestuous and prolonged applause.)

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Khrushchev,  Secret Report, pp. S42--S43.

It was not Stalin! Not Stalin, but the entire Party. And the entire Party probably took orders and instructions from the Holy Spirit.

Khrushchev  pretended to glorify the Party, that collective entity of struggle, to diminish the rфle played by Stalin. Organizing the cult of the personality, Stalin usurped the victory that was won by the `entire' Party. As if Stalin was not the most important leader of the Party, the one who, throughout the war, displayed great working capacity, great stamina and foresightedness. As if the strategic decisions had not been confirmed by Stalin, but, in opposition, by his subordinates.

If Stalin was not a military genius, one can only conclude that the greatest war in history, the war that humanity led against fascism, was won with no military geniuses. Because in this terrifying war, no one played a comparable rфle to Stalin. Even Averell Harriman,  U.S. imperialism's representative, after repeating the necessary clichйs about `the tyrant in Stalin', clearly stated `his high intelligence, that fantastic grasp of detail, his shrewdness and the surprising human sensitivity that he was capable of showing, at least in the war years. I found him better informed than Roosevelt, more realistic than Churchill,  in some ways the most effective of the war leaders.'

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W. Averell Harriman  and Elie Abel,  Special Envoy to Churchill  and Stalin: 1941--1946 (New York: Random House, 1975), p. 536.

`When Stalin was present, there was no room for anyone else. Where were our military chiefs?', cried out Khrushchev  the demagogue. He flattered the marshals: wasn't it you who were the real military geniuses of the Second World War? Finally, Zhukov  and Vasilevsky,  the two most important military leaders, gave their opinion fifteen and twenty years, respectively, after Khrushchev's  infamous report. We present Vasilevsky's  opinion first.

`The process of Stalin's growth as a general came to maturity .... After the Stalingrad and especially the Kursk battles he rose to the heights of strategic leadership. From then on Stalin would think in terms of modern warfare, had a good grasp of all questions relating to the preparation for and execution of operations. He would now demand that military action be carried out in a creative way, with full account of military science, so that all actions were decisive and flexible, designed to split up and encircle the enemy. In his military thinking he markedly displayed a tendency to concentrate men and materiel, to diversified employment of all possible ways of commencing operations and their conduct. Stalin began to show an excellent grasp of military strategy, which came fairly easily to him since he was a past master at the art of political strategy, and of operational art as well.'

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Vasilevsky,  op. cit. , pp. 449--450.

`Joseph Stalin has certainly gone down in military history. His undoubted service is that it was under his direct guidance as Supreme High Commander that the Soviet Armed Forces withstood the defensive campaigns and carried out all the offensive operations so splendidly. Yet he, to the best of my judgment, never spoke of his own contribution. The title of Hero of the Soviet Union and rank of Generalissimus were awarded to him by written representation to the Party Central Committee Politburo from front commanders .... He told people plainly and honestly about the miscalculations made during the war.'

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Ibid. , p. 452.

`It is my profound conviction that Stalin, especially in the latter part of the war, was the strongest and most remarkable figure of the strategic command. He successfully supervised the fronts and all the war efforts of the country on the basis of the Party line .... He has remained in my memory as a stern and resolute war leader, but not without a certain personal charm.'

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Ibid. , p. 447--448.

Zhukov  begins by giving us a perfect example of leadership methods, as presented by Mao Zedong:  concentrate the correct ideas of the masses and transform them into directives for the masses.

`To Stalin is usually ascribed a number of fundamental innovations such as elaborating the methods of artillery offensive action, the winning of air supremacy, methods of encircling the enemy, the splitting of surrounded groups and their demolition by parts, etc.

`All these paramount problems of the art of war are the fruits of battles with the enemy, the fruits of profound thinking, the fruits of the experience of a big team of leading military leaders and the troops themselves.

`Here Stalin's merit lies in the fact that he correctly appraised the advice offered by the military experts and then in summarized form --- in instructions, directives and regulations --- immediately circulated them among the troops for practical guidance.'

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Zhukov,  op. cit. , p. 285.

`Before and especially after the war an outstanding role was attributed to Stalin in creating the Armed Forces, elaborating the fundamentals of Soviet military science and major doctrines of strategy, and even operational art ....

`Stalin mastered the technique of the organization of front operations and operations by groups of fronts and guided them with skill, thoroughly understanding complicated strategic questions. He displayed his ability as Commander-in-Chief beginning with Stalingrad.