Page 264 - The Chief Culprit

Red Army, Black Gulag Uniforms y 225

Kazakov says of the second echelon: “After the beginning of the war, radical changes to the
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plans for its use had to be made.” Major General V. Zemskov speaks more precisely: “We
were forced to use these reserves not for attack, as planned, but for defense.” General S. P.
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Ivanov: “If the troops of the First Strategic Echelon had been successful in . . . transferring the
battle action to the enemy’s territory before the deployment of the main forces, the Second
Strategic Echelon had to fortify the efforts of the first echelon and develop a counterstrike
according to the overall strategic plan.” e term “counterstrike” should not add confusion.
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e Red Army always delivered a “counterstrike.”
Lieutenant General S. A. Kalinin talks about the mood in the Second Strategic Echelon.
Before the beginning of the secret movement west, he prepared the troops of the Siberian mil-
itary district (later transformed into the 24th Army) for action. During the course of training,
the general heard opinions from junior officers: “We probably won’t need fortifications either.
After all, we are getting ready not for defense, but for invasion, we will hit the enemy on his
territory.” All armies were prepared to fight “on enemy territory.” e commander of the
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16th Army of the Second Strategic Echelon, Lieutenant General M. F. Lukin, does not say
exactly on what territory he planned to use the 16th Army that was under his command in
1941. But in any case, it was not Soviet territory: “We planned to fight on enemy territory.”
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On the same page of the Soviet military journal where Lukin was quoted, Marshal A. M.
Vassilevsky stresses that we should believe Lukin: “[T]here is much harsh truth in his words.”
Vassilevsky himself was a master at fighting “on enemy territory.” It was he who carried out
a surprise attack on Japanese troops in Manchuria in 1945, demonstrating the best example
of how one has to deliver a sudden treacherous blow to the enemy’s rear while he is occupied
by war on other fronts.
From experience, as well as from theory, the Soviet High Command knew that not
even one division could be left for a winter in the woods, unprepared. A soldier can spend
the winter under any conditions—that was not the problem. e problem was that near the
western borders there were no shooting ranges, no training camps, no tank depots, and no
conditions for battle training. Troops must either immediately enter combat, or inevitable
degradation of the level of battle readiness would ensue. e Soviet High Command knew
that the culprits would be found, and they knew what the fate of the culprits would be—yet
they took practically the entire Red Army into places where there were no conditions for
battle training. e Soviet High Command did not fear Stalin’s ire, because the move forward
did not endanger the troops’ combat readiness. Stationing them under such poor conditions
was planned for a very short time only, after which the Red Army would attack westward.
Stalin had no choice. He could not turn his armies around. Many armies and corps cre-
ated in the first half of 1941 had nowhere to turn back to. Another troop transfer would have
required many more months, would have paralyzed the entire railroad system, and would
have meant economic catastrophe. Moreover, what sense does it make first to spend half a
year gathering troops, and then half a year dispersing them? Even if, after a full concentration,
an immediate dispersion had begun, even then the process could not have been finished be-
fore the arrival of winter. Besides, Stalin kept the process of creation and transfer to the west
of the entire Second Strategic Echelon strictly secret. Could he have counted on full secrecy,
if he left these armies for several weeks in the border forests?
If the Red Army could not turn back and could not stay in the border regions for
long, what was left for it to do? In order to answer this question one needs to bring up the