Hobsbawm on USSR (was Re: RES: Kim Jong Il Thinks He's a God-King: Why Ignore It?)

[Brad De Long]

>Brad DeLong asks:
>
>>  As it was, it was a near-run thing--even with the GULAG
>>being opened up for officers to return after June 21. Didn't
>>Rokossovsky and Vatutin go straight from prison camps to Front
>>command?
>
>No.
>
>N. F. Vatutin had been Deputy Chief of the General Staff since at least the
>fall of 1940. According to the authoritative John Erickson ("The Soviet
>High Command" p.508), he had been "undergoing training in the staff
>academy" at the time of the 1937-8 purges. If anything, it seems he is an
>instance of an immensely competent officer who reached senior command level
>as a *result* of the purge.
>
>Rokossovsky, who of course had been arrested, had long since been
>exonerated. He had been promoted Major General in June 1940, and by the
>fall of 1940 given command of one of the newly created mechanized corps.
>(Erickson, "The Road to Stalingrad" p.19). Nor does his case support Brad's
>unnuanced coldwar antisovietism. Rokossovsky did not confess, but
>successfully defended himself at his trial (see Erickson,id).

touche...