Page 247 - The Chief Culprit

208 y e Chief Culprit

It has been said that the ability to keep silent is much less common among people than
any other talent. From that standpoint, Stalin was a genius—he knew how to keep silent.
is was not only the strongest point of his character, but his most powerful weapon. With
his silence, he disarmed the vigilance of his enemies; Stalin’s attacks were always sudden and
therefore fatal. Why then did he speak on June 13, 1941, and to a mass audience? Whom
did Stalin address? Stalin’s empire was highly centralized, and the mechanism of state gov-
ernment, especially after the Great Purge, was so perfected that any order was immediately
communicated from the highest ranks to the lowest executors, and was immediately carried
out. If in June 1941 Stalin had some concerns that had to be related hastily to millions of
executors, why not use the perfect power structure that communicated all orders without
distortion or delay? If the TASS announcement of June 13, 1941, was serious, it would have
been repeated on all the secret channels. But Marshal of the Soviet Union A. M. Vassilevsky
testified that after the announcement was published in print it “was not followed by any
directives regarding the armed forces or reexamination of previously adopted policy.” He
2
also said that nothing changed in the agendas of the General Staff or the Narkomat (People’s
Commissariat for Defense), “and nothing was supposed to change. . . . But because no direc-
tives followed it, we quickly realized that it was irrelevant both for the armed forces and for
the country as a whole.” 3
Not only was the TASS announcement not repeated through secret military channels,
but at the same time as the announcement came out, an order was issued to the troops in cer-
tain military districts, for example, in the Baltic district, that was in meaning and spirit quite
the opposite of the TASS announcement. While the TASS announcement was broadcast on
4
the radio, the military newspapers that were inaccessible to outsiders began to publish radi-
cally different ideas. is was reported, for instance, by Vice Admiral I. I. Azarov.
5
ere were five military districts on the Soviet Union’s western borders: the First
Strategic Echelon of the Red Army. Let’s examine what happened around June 13, 1941,
in the Kiev special district. ere are many records of the events of that day. One of them is
kept in the Central Archive of the Defense Ministry of the Russian Federation. is is the
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“Directive from the People’s Commissar for Defense of the USSR and the Chief of General
Staff of the Red Army to the Military Council of the Kiev special military district.” e docu-
ment is dated June 13, 1941, and labeled “Top Secret, Special Importance.”
e Soviet system of secret classification had four levels of secrecy: “For Official Use
Only,” “Secret,” “Top Secret,” and “Top Secret, Special Importance.” ere was one more
level, established by Stalin: “Top Secret, Special File.” Documents in this category were pro-
duced only in one copy and could not leave the premises of the Kremlin. “Top Secret, Special
Importance” was the highest level of secrecy that could have been used beyond the Kremlin.
Such a document arrived at the staff headquarters of the Kiev special military district while
the radio was broadcasting the strange TASS announcement. e directive ordered the “trans-
fer [of] all deep-rear divisions and corps commands with the corps formations to new camps
closer to the state border.”
Four armies were camped in the Kiev district; behind them were five rifle corps and
four motorized corps. According to the directive of June 13, 1941, all five rifle corps in the
Kiev district moved to the border: the 31st, 36th, 37th, 49th, and 55th. A rifle corps three
divisions strong had 966 field-guns and mortars, 2,100 machine guns, and more than 2,000