Among outsiders, only Finland’s field marshal Mannerheim—the former tsarist officer—grasped the truth about this contradictory beast. “In the higher ranks there were signs of a kind of inertia,” he observed, indicating that the Red Army had reproduced the shortcomings of the army under tsarism. “The Russians based their art of war on the weight of material, and were clumsy, ruthless, and extravagant. There was a striking absence of creative imagination where the fluctuations of the situation demanded quick decisions.” With equal perspicacity, again almost uniquely, he comprehended the Red Army’s immense brute power, a profligate yet determined fighting machine, one of the hinges of the twentieth century.244
FATHERLINESS
Stalin evidently admitted to Shaposhnikov that “concerning Finland you were right.”245 Such an admission of a mistake, even in private, was exceedingly rare for him. It was likely made possible by his respect for Shaposhnikov, a feeling that redounded to a Shaposhnikov protégé, Alexander Vasilevsky (b. 1895), who had graduated from the General Staff Academy in 1937 and joined the party the next year (when admission was reopened). Vasilevsky’s father was a priest; his mother, the daughter of a priest. In 1939, he had become a deputy chief of the general staff’s operations directorate and had assisted in preparing the Winter War plan of battle that Stalin did not use. In the first half of March 1940, after a long meeting in the Little Corner, Vasilevsky returned to staff headquarters to issue orders based upon the decisions. Suddenly, Poskryobyshev called to say that he was expected at the post-meeting supper at Stalin’s Kremlin apartment below the Little Corner. He rushed back and was seated next to Shaposhnikov.
Stalin pronounced one of the many toasts to Vasilevsky’s health, then unexpectedly asked why, after graduating from seminary, Vasilevsky had not become a priest. He answered that he had had no such intention. “At that, Stalin smiled through his mustaches and observed, ‘I see, I see, you had no such intention. Understandable. But Mikoyan and I did want to become priests, but for some reason they would not take us. Why, I do not understand to this day.’” After this playful gesture of solidarity, Stalin asked Vasilevsky why he did not help his father financially. “As far as I know, one of your brothers is a physician, another is an agronomist, a third is a military commander-aviator and a well-off person,” he remarked, underscoring his familiarity with Vasilevsky’s personnel file. “I think all of you could be helping your parents, and then the old man could long ago have broken with his church. He would not need the church in order to survive.” Vasilevsky had been scrupulously avoiding contact with his father; recently, when he got a letter from home, he had run straight to the party organization at the general staff to confess. Now, Vasilevsky recalled, “Stalin said that I should immediately reestablish contact with my parents and give them systematic assistance and inform the general staff party organization about the authorization to do so.”246
Vasily Stalin, in the latter half of March 1940, completed his two-year course of study at the military aviation school near Sevastopol with marks of “excellent,” according to a report sent to Stalin. He received the rank of air force lieutenant.247 Later that year, he would marry Galina Burdonskaya, a student of the Moscow Polygraphic Institute, also nineteen years old, who lived in a communal apartment. Stalin would not be informed until after the wedding. “You’re married; so be it,” he would write to Vasily in red pencil. “I pity her, marrying such a fool.”248
A RECKONING
A harsh internal Soviet reckoning of the Winter War—which would make no mention of Stalin’s errors or his prior murderous rampages—commenced on March 26–28, 1940, at a Central Committee plenum, two weeks after hostilities ended. Molotov reported on the settlement with Finland, prompting Litvinov to criticize the course of foreign policy since his dismissal, while predicting that Germany would attack the Soviet Union. Molotov tried, and failed, to cut Litvinov off; Stalin remained silent.249 Voroshilov gave an unusually self-critical opening report and offered to resign.250 Mekhlis was one of those who piled on (hearsay accounts have Mekhlis complaining that “Voroshilov cannot stand Mekhlis,” which was true, and likely reflected how every officer in the room felt).251 But Stalin upbraided his attack dog for “a hysterical speech,” called Mekhlis “a good man, a hard worker, but unsuitable for army leadership,” and praised Voroshilov for conceding his errors. “It does not happen often around here that a people’s commissar speaks so openly about his own shortcomings.”252