[lbo-talk] Red Army purge

[Grant Lee]

> GL: Merely "able"? He virtually created the Red Army and I don't think
there can
> be much doubt that if Trotsky had still been in charge the army would have
> responded better and quicker to the Nazi invasion. I mean, I doubt that he
> would have purged _35,000_ Red Army officers in 1937-38, as Stalin did.
> Hk: In the best tradition of Thurston, Arch Getty et al, I suggest you
seriously verify your numbers. By >the bye, you might also check out
> Lenin's correspondences with both T & S on the fronts; Mark von
> Hagen's history of the Red Army, and "Stalin's Generals Speak".

Hari, what are the figures from those sources? Note that I said "purged",
not "executed", and here are some supporting sources:

"[The execution of Tukhachevskii and his immediate associates]  marked the
beginning of all general purge of the army that was to eliminate 3 of the 5
marshals, 14 of the 16 army commanders, and approximately half of the 70 to
80,000 men in the entire officer corps. Needless to say, this purge
necessarily had an extremely deleterious effect on the effectiveness of the
Red Army's military leadership."
http://mars.acnet.wnec.edu/~grempel/courses/ww2/lectures/purge.html

"More than half the Russian officer corps, some 35,000 experienced men, were
executed or banished." http://www.marxists.org/glossary/people/t/u.htm

"All told, 30,000 members of the armed forces were executed. This included
fifty per cent of all army officers."
http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/RUSpurge.htm

[Voice of Russia says] "More than 40,000 army and naval officers were
arrested on charges of plotting to betray the Soviet Union to Japan and
Germany. The purge effectively denuded the army ranks all way down to the
battalion and company level." http://www.vor.ru/century/1937.html

[Even a Marxist-Leninist site says: ] "In the magazine "Young Guard"
(1989 -- #9) there was published a document taken from the archives of the
Ministry of Defense of the USSR, which was presented at that time to Stalin,
Molotov, Voroshilov and Beria on May 5, 1940, that in 1937-1939, 36,898
commanders were dismissed from the ranks of Red Army. More than 75% of them
were retired because of their age, sickness, moral grounds (drunkenness) and
unworthy of service in the Red Army. From August of 1938, there was working
a commission which was told to look into these cases and make
recommendations. More than 30,000 requests were received by those dismissed
to look into their appeals. In January 1, 1940, this commission returned to
their posts more than 12,461 commanders, from those 10,700 were formerly
dismissed for political reasons and now put back into ranks."
http://www.mltranslations.org/Russia/aucpb.htm

Except, of course, those prevented from "appealing" by a bullet in the head.

regards,

Grant.