The pre-Kosarev leaders of the Komsomol had naturally fared badly, too. The original First Secretary, E. V. Tsetlin, had been expelled from the Party as a Rightist in 1933 and arrested, but was released and returned to membership; rearrested on 16 April 1937, he was sentenced on 2 June 1937 to ten years by the Military Collegium, and to death by the local NKVD Troika at Ivanovo on 16 September 1937. His successor, 0. L. Ryvkin, was sentenced to death by the Military Collegium on 7 August 1937. The third, L. A. Shatsky, was sentenced to five years by the Special Board in March 1935, and (as we have seen) to death by the Military Collegium on 10 January 1937. P. I. Smorodin, the next, whom we have already met in his later Leningrad career, was shot on 22 February 1939. The fifth, N. P. Chaplin, was “repressed” and died 25 September 1938. The next, A. I. Milchakov, only served sixteen years in labor camp and survived.54
A LAST BLOW AT THE ARMY
The Far Eastern Army had not been treated quite as the rest of the forces had. For strategic reasons, it had been organized as something like an independent entity.
It was the only great body of troops commanded by a Marshal—the tough, competent, and practically experienced Blyukher.
Blyukher, though his name suggests a German origin, was in fact of pure Russian descent. His peasant grandfather had had the name given to him by some whim of his landlord during the days of serfdom.55 Ironically enough, there was something of the German stance to him. Dark and grizzled, he had a square, bull-like face with a large close-clipped moustache in the
He had been a worker in a wagon factory and had served a thirty-two-month sentence for leading a strike while still twenty years old. He first came to prominence when, with V. V. Kuibyshev, he had established an isolated Bolshevik enclave amid a sea of White Armies, in the Samara area. In the distinguished Civil War career which followed, he had been one of the first to be given the Order of the Red Banner. Later, under the pseudonym Galen, he had acted as chief military adviser to Chiang Kai-shek. He is said, back in the early 1930s, to have opposed collectivization in the Far East on military grounds and, with Voroshilov’s support, to have obtained a certain exemption there; and there was also talk of some connection with Syrtsov.56
While Blyukher was still in Moscow in June 1937 in connection with the Tukhachevsky “Trial,” the NKVD struck at his Army. His new Chief of Staff, Sangursky, is said to have become involved (with the Party Secretary of the Far Eastern Territory, Kutev) in what Stalin felt to be some sort of political intrigue against the leadership.57 He was now arrested and tortured. Another account has him implicating literally hundreds of officers and in 1938 repudiating his confession and claiming that saboteurs in the NKVD were attempting to weaken the Army.58 Sangursky is reported as still alive in Irkutsk jail in 1939,59 full of remorse for having, under torture, given away so many officers as fellow conspirators. He was then facing a further charge—conspiracy with Yezhov to wreck the Army!
With Sangursky went the Deputy Chief of Staff, the Chief of Combat Training, and the Chief of Intelligence. In the autumn of 1937, Ingaunis, commanding the Far Eastern Air Force, was also in the Butyrka, having been severely tortured in the Lefortovo and confessing to espionage. The NKVD noncommissioned officer who tore off his insignia and Orders in the Lubyanka remarked, “Well, they certainly handed out medals to all sorts of counter-revolutionary swine!”60 The Head of the Army’s Political Administration was arrested, too. At the same time, most of the political leadership in the eastern provinces were seized.
Even so, as far as the Army is concerned, this phase only lasted about five weeks, and was not so intense or on such a mass scale as in the other military districts. It ended with Blyukher’s return to his post.
For meanwhile, an even more important consideration had arisen: on 30 June, some patrol fighting had broken out between Soviet and Japanese troops on the Amur, and on 6 July the Japanese had seized Bolshoi Island in that stream. In spite of protests, the Russians made no attempt to dislodge them. There is no doubt that this was a probing action by Japanese military elements, who took the view that the local Soviet capacity to fight had been largely paralyzed by the Purge.
Blyukher at once started to repair as far as possible the disorganization that had already set in. Tukhachevsky’s execution, followed by the arrests in the Far Eastern Army, had left him deeply depressed.61 But in the face of the military threat, Stalin made no further move against him for the time being.
