266. Stalin received Proskurov, alone, on July 7, 1940, for an hour. Four days later came the announcement that he had been replaced by Golikov. Proskurov was transferred to command of the Far East military district.
267. Naumov, 1941 god, II: 602 (RGASPI, f. 17, op. 165, d. 77, l. 178–211).
268. Chubarian and Shukman, Stalin and the Soviet-Finnish War, 267, 268; “Zimniaia voina”: rabota nad oshibkami, 36. See also Volkogonov, Triumf i tragediia, II/1: 47; Volkognov, Stalin: Triumph and Tragedy, 365–6 (citing TsAMO, f. 132, op. 264 211, d. 73, l. 67–110). Stalin would also criticize army political work. “It is not enough that the political worker in the army will repeat ‘the party of Lenin-Stalin,’ it is no more than repeating ‘Hallelujah, Hallelujah,’” he complained of the Finnish war campaign. RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 1124, l. 27.
269. Khrushchev added, “It was the only time I have ever witnessed such an outburst.” Khrushchev, Vospominaniia, I: 257; Khrushchev, Memoirs, I: 256. Khrushchev is the only source for this incident. He gives no date, though it seems likely to have occurred in 1940 after the Finnish war debacle.
270. “Military history—especially Russian—is being studied poorly,” Mekhlis, head of the army’s political directorate, complained in a speech to the Main Military Council (May 10, 1940). “We have a lot of unfair ridiculing of the old army despite the fact that we had such notable tsarist army generals as Suvorov, Kutuzov, and Bagration . . . All of this leads to the ignoring of concrete historical experience despite the fact that history is the best teacher.” Brandenberger and Dubrovsky, “The People Need a Tsar,” 881 (citing “O Voennoi ideologii,” RGVA, f. 9, op. 376a, d. 4252, l. 121, 138–40). In 1940, the war of 1812 against Napoleon once again became known as the Fatherland War: Nechkina, Istoriia SSSR, II: 76.
271. More than twenty top officials received copies of these top-secret documents. Rybalkin, Operatisia “X,” 105–6. Stalin had received a long analysis, forwarded by Orlov and dated Dec. 31, 1938, on the performance of Soviet aviation in Spain. The analysis was written by F. A. Agaltsov (b. 1900), a commissar of the Red Air Force in the Spanish Republic army. Stalin wrote on the cover letter, questioning why Orlov and not Loktionov was sending him materials on aviation. Kudriashov, SSSR i grazhdanskaia voina v Ispanii, 433–53 (APRF, f. 3, op. 65, d. 228, l. 38, 39–84), 532n585.
272. Helmuth Klotz, an émigré German writer living in France, argued of Spain that the tank had been overtaken by the new German anti-tank guns. Klotz, Les leçons militaires de la guerre civile en Espagne (Paris, Édité par l’auteur, 1937); Militärische Lehren des Bürgerkrieges in Spanien (Paris, Selbstverlag des Verfassers 1938); Uroki grazhdanski voiny v Ispanii (Moscow: Voenizdat, 1938). In the preface to the Russian translation, Soviet editors took Klotz to task for wrongly minimizing the role of the air force in Spain.
273. Roberts, Stalin’s General, 64 (citing RGVA, f. 32113, op. 1, d. 2). Stern wrote up a report, too. “In many ways, this operation resembles Hannibal’s campaign at Cannae,” he would boast, comparing Khalkin-Gol to Carthage’s battle against the Romans (216 B.C.). “I think it will become the second perfect battle of encirclement in all history.” Vorozheikin, Istrebiteli. Stern would later complain officially that Zhukov and his men were gossiping that Stern had had nothing to do with drawing up the battle plan. Krasnov, Neizvestnyi Zhukov, 121–2.
274. Rzheshevskii et al., Zimniaia voina, II: 276.
275. For example, Russian observers of the Crimean War (1853–6) had come to see the necessity of replacing the .70-caliber smoothbore musket, in use since Peter the Great. In 1857, Russia decisively opted for the .60-caliber muzzle-loader (manufactured abroad) and, by 1862, had acquired more than a quarter million of these shoulder rifles, nicknamed the vintovka. But in a head-snapping turnabout, the 1866 Austro-Prussian War demonstrated the inferiority of muzzle-loaders to breechloaders. Here was a very expensive decision for Russia: junk its huge stock of rifles, or try, somehow, to adapt them. After emotional debate, experiment, and testing, Russian strategists could not make up their minds and pursued both replacement and adaptation, which were at cross-purposes. Menning, Bayonets before Bullets, 30–3.
