The Red Army and the Terror Peter James Whitewood Submitted in accordance with the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy The University of Leeds, School of History Submitted July 2012 1 The candidate confirms that the work submitted is his own and that appropriate credit has been given where reference has been made to the work of others. This copy has been supplied on the understanding that it is copyright material and that no quotation from the thesis may be published without proper acknowledgement. © 2012 The University of Leeds and Peter James Whitewood 2 Acknowledgements In completing this thesis I owe a very large debt to Dr James Harris for his continual support and insightful criticism throughout. This PhD first developed from my MA at the University of Leeds when I took James’s module on the Great Terror, and finishing the thesis would have been impossible without his careful supervision. From the Leeds School of History I also owe large thanks to Dr Mark Smith for his always helpful advice on completing the PhD itself, working in the Russian archives and on other peculiarities in studying Soviet history. The advice and comments from Dr Steven Main, Dr Stephen Brown and Professor Roger Reese have been invaluable, and made the thesis much stronger in its final stages. A special thank you goes to Steven Main for sending me so much material that I had not previously considered. I should also thank Dr Matthew Rendle who first sparked my interest in Russian history at Newcastle University where I did my undergraduate degree. From Leeds I have to thank Tom Davies, Nick Grant, Vincent Hiribarren, Julio Decker, Andrew Hogan, Catherine Coombs, Louise Seaward, Rachel Johnson and Say Burgin for making what can be a solitary research project much more enjoyable. A special thank you goes to Irina and Dmitri for their warm hospitality and opening their home to me during a few very cold months in Moscow as I did the bulk of my archival research. For this PhD even to be feasible in the first place I should thank the School of History at the University of Leeds for providing me with the financial support and also the Royal Historical Society for a travel grant for the Moscow trip. Finally, I owe a special gratitude to Carly for putting up with what became in the end long working days, time abroad and perhaps interminable conversation about this thesis. 3 Abstract This thesis examines the reasons why Stalin purged his Red Army during 1937-38 at the same time as World War was looming. This gutting of the officer corps created huge turmoil inside the Red Army and affected at the very least 35,000 army leaders, resulting in thousands of discharges, arrests and executions. Previous explanations of the military purge have typically concentrated on Stalin’s relationship with his military elite and how he supposedly believed they would become a block to his expanding power. Framed as the ‘Tukhachevskii Affair’, after its most famous victim, the military purge is most commonly depicted as merely the extension of Stalin’s advancing lust for total power into the Red Army. This thesis will show that such accounts are unsupported and inadequate and will provide a new explanation of the military purge. This thesis will show that Stalin did not attack his army elite in order to increase his power, but this was a last minute action made from a position of weakness. Taking the formation of the Red Army in early 1918 as its starting point, this thesis will argue that the key to understanding Stalin’s attack on the officer corps in 1937 is to understand how the military was perceived as susceptible to subversion. From its very formation the Red Army was seen as a target of ‘enemies’, ‘counterrevolutionaries’ and was regarded as vulnerable to infiltration. Over a period of twenty years the army faced an array of exaggerated and imaginary threats. Stalin was plagued by nagging doubts about the reliability of his forces, from mass instability in the lower ranks to supposed disloyalty in the military elite. By 1937 these perceived threats had culimated in a spy scare and it was this that finally forced Stalin to crack down on the Red Army. 4 Table of Contents Acknowledgements ........................................................................................................... 2 Abstract ............................................................................................................................. 3 Table of Contents .............................................................................................................. 4 Abbreviations .................................................................................................................... 5 Terminology and Transliteration ....................................................................................... 6 Introduction ....................................................................................................................... 7 Chapter One: The Red Army in Civil War ..................................................................... 36 The Creation of the Workers’ and Peasants’ Red Army ............................................. 37 Civil War and the ‘Military Specialists’ ..................................................................... 40 Fear and Prejudices of Military Specialists ................................................................. 46 The Cheka and the Struggle for the Security of the Red Army .................................. 56 Peasant Rebellion and the War with Poland ............................................................... 61 Chapter Two: The Red Army in Consolidation .............................................................. 70 Fears of Subversion and the Military Specialists ........................................................ 71 Soviet Counterintelligence and the Myth of the ‘Soviet Thermidor’ ......................... 81 The Espionage Threat from Foreign Governments ..................................................... 86 Trotskyism in the Red Army ....................................................................................... 93 Chapter Three: Reorganisation and Crisis in the Red Army ......................................... 110 Disputes about Military Reform and the Problem of Tukhachevskii ....................... 111 Collectivisation and the ‘Peasant Mood’ .................................................................. 123 Operation vesna ......................................................................................................... 132 Chapter Four: The Red Army and Bolshevik Party, 1930-36 ....................................... 145 Underlying Problems of Army Reliability in the Early 1930s .................................. 146 Growing Political Pressures and the Red Army Elite ............................................... 159 The Kirov Murder ..................................................................................................... 164 The First Show Trial and the Trotskyist Military Centre .......................................... 184 Chapter Five: The Military Purge ................................................................................. 192 The Investigation into the Trotskyist Military Organisation ..................................... 192 Foreign Espionage and the ‘Military-Fascist Plot’ ................................................... 201 The Aftermath of the Trial and the Expansion of the Military Purge ....................... 233 Conclusion ..................................................................................................................... 243 5 Abbreviations GPU - State Political Directorate GUGB – Main Directorate of State Security INO - Foreign Department of the Political Police OO - Special Department of the Political Police OGPU - Joint State Political Directorate OKDVA - Special Red Banner Far Eastern Army MOTsR - Monarchist Union of Central Russia NEP - New Economic Policy NKO - People’s Commissariat for Defence NKVD - People’s Commissariat for Internal Affairs PUR - Political Administration of the Red Army RKKA - Workers’ and Peasants’ Red Army ROVS - Russian General Military Union RVSR - Revolutionary Military Council of the Republic RVS - Revolutionary Military Council STO - Council of Labour and Defence TsK - Central Committee UNR - Ukrainian People’s Republic VChK (Cheka) - All-Russian Extraordinary Commission to Combat Counterrevolution and Sabotage Military Districts BVO – Belorussian Military District KVO – Kiev Military District KhVO – Kharkov Military District LVO - Leningrad Military District MVO - Moscow Military District PriVO – Volga Military District SAVO – Central-Asian Military District SKVO – North-Caucasian Military District UVO - Urals Military District 6 Terminology and Transliteration In transliterating from Russian to English this thesis uses the Library of Congress system. The only exception made is the transliteration of ‘Trotsky’, rather than ‘Trotskii’, as the former is most common. As this thesis covers a twenty-year period from 1917, rather than frequently alternate between the changing names of the Soviet political police, for example Cheka, GPU, OGPU and NKVD, for simplicity, ‘political police’ is used when possible. 7 Introduction On 11 June 1937 a closed military court passed sentences of execution on several of the Red Army’s most talented and experienced officers. Charged with membership of a ‘military-fascist plot’, working with the Nazis and planning to overthrow