Page 135 - The Chief Culprit

96 y e Chief Culprit

But what happened to the rest, who were dismissed but not arrested? Where did
they go?
ere is no secret here. In every army there is a continuous process of change, replac-
ing the old with the new, rejuvenating the command staff. Every year military academies
turn out thousands of new officers. e army never has too many officers. Every year it takes
into its ranks new ones, and sends the same number of old ones back into civilian life. e
main reason for dismissal is the completion of service. I will not intrude here with my own
calculations, but imagine that your army has two hundred thousand officers. Estimate how
many years an officer serves, decide how many commanders you must let go every year to
their well-earned retirement, and then replace them with the new graduates from the acad-
emies, so that you have a constant process of renewing the ranks and so that you do not have
stagnation.
e document presented to the Deputy People’s Commissar of Defense is titled ac-
cordingly: “Document about the number of dismissals from the command staff in 1937–
1938.” Who would dare suppose that during these years nobody was dismissed from the
army upon completing years of service?
It must also be remembered that not every officer reached his retirement age. A second
reason for dismissal was state of health. ose who went through two, or even three wars, had
all sorts of experiences. One had frostbitten legs, another had damaged hearing, and another
one had old wounds that would not heal. People can be dismissed from the army not only for
war wounds, but also for a number of other illnesses, from flat feet to cancer.
Aside from all this, there is such a punishment as dismissal from the army. It is no lon-
ger the year 1937, but officers are still being dismissed from the army for all kinds of reasons.
e main ones are drunkenness, moral degradation, breach of discipline, and disobedience
to authority. Who could dare assert that in 1937 nobody was dismissed from the army for
drunkenness? is does not at all entail that the drunk was arrested and executed.
Even of those who were arrested, not all were victims of political repressions. ere have
always been military crimes and property crimes and so on. Among officers there have always
been rapists, murderers, thieves, and other criminals. e document speaks of all those ar-
rested without distinguishing between the political and the criminals. Who could dare assert
that in 1937 there were no criminals among the command staff of the Red Army?
On May 5, 1940, E. A. Shchyadenko signed the “Report of the chief of the command
of the staff personnel of the Red Army of the Defense Commissariat of the USSR.” e
concluding phrase: “ ose unjustly dismissed are returned to the army: in total by May 1,
1940—12,461.” It is important to note that the number of those returned to the ranks is
higher than the number of those arrested. And this is easy to explain: both those who were
arrested and those who were simply dismissed were returned to the ranks. e Kremlin pro-
paganda endlessly repeats the story about the 40,000 executed commanders, but for some
reason nobody likes to remember that 12,461 of those “executed” returned to the ranks. And
this is only the beginning of the process. It is known that the main mass of those dismissed
returned in the second half of 1940, and especially in the first half of 1941—for example,
A. V. Gorbatov, a future General of the Red Army. Many such examples can be brought up.
A strange story surfaces: Shchyadenko, who wrote the document about the dismissed com-
manders, is often quoted. But the same Shchyadenko who reports of the return of those who
were dismissed is never remembered or quoted.