During the winter, various arrests were carried out. Corps Commander Rokossovsky had been beaten senseless and dragged off to prison, together with a number of other officers of his unit. When Rokossovsky came before a “court,” its president said that it had the evidence of one of his fellow conspirators, Adolf Kazimirovich Yushkevich, who had confessed that he and Rokossovsky had belonged to a counter-revolutionary center and had had certain instructions and tasks.
“Can the dead give evidence?” Rokossovsky asked, when he was allowed to comment.
“What do you mean, the dead?”
“Well, Adolf Kazimirovich Yushkevich was killed in 1920 at Perekop. I mentioned to the investigator that Yushkevich served in the Cavalry Group, but I accidentally forgot to mention his loss.”62
Rokossovsky was merely imprisoned, and was one of those lucky enough to be released when the pressure had died down.
Meanwhile, things were to get worse.
Corps Commander Khakanian, Head of the Political Administration of the Far Eastern Army, was arrested on 1 February 1938. And at the end of June 1938, when every other part of the Army, and of the country, had been dealt with, Mekhlis arrived in Khabarovsk with a group of new political commissars. At the same time, the sinister Frinovsky steamed in, in a special train, with a large NKVD staff. The great purge of the Far Eastern Army, of which they had been cheated in 1937, was now at hand.63
Mekhlis and Frinovsky first destroyed their own representatives. Mekhlis replaced the officers of the political administration; the “Gamarnik–Bulin gang” was later said to have been particularly active in the Far East.64 Frinovsky arrested and shot the sixteen leading NKVD officials of the area. He was balked of one major figure. The Far Eastern NKVD Chief was G. Lyushkov, who had been Deputy Head of the Secret Political Department under Molchanov in the days of the Zinoviev Trial. One of the few of such a rank still left over from the Yagoda regime, he had been so far spared because of his friendly relations with Yezhov. He had now decided it was time to push his luck no further, and on 13 June he had slipped across the Manchurian border with a vast amount of intelligence information for the Japanese.65
Having prepared the police and political striking forces, Stalin’s emissaries turned on the Army proper. Blyukher’s new staff and commanders were arrested wholesale. His Deputy Commander, his new Chief of Staff, his new Air Commander, Pumpur—who had served in Spain—and his leading Army Commander, Levandovsky, recently transferred from the Caucasus, all disappeared. (Pumpur was later released, but was rearrested and shot in 1942.) But now it was not only a matter of a few seniors. Forty percent of the commanders up to regimental level, 70 percent of divisional and corps staffs, and over 80 percent of the front staff were seized, as NKVD lorries raided the officers’ quarters night after night. Blyukher was soon “standing amidst the shambles of what had been his command.”66
Once again he was reprieved, and for the same reason as before. The Japanese had seen their chance. On 6 July 1938 they launched a probing attack with limited objectives on Lake Hassan.
Fortunately, there were still a few competent officers who had survived or been transferred to the area—in particular, Corps Commander Shtern, who had recently been Chief Military Adviser in Spain and was now given command of one of the armies into which Blyukher’s front had been reorganized. He was to have time to fight his battle and report on it to the next Party Congress and even to be elected to the new Central Committee before he, too, disappeared.
After five weeks of intermittent fighting, the Far Eastern troops first contained the Japanese and then pressed them back. By 11 August, the battle was over. A week later, on 18 August, Blyukher was recalled to Moscow.67
The “Stalin air route,” pioneered with such panache at the time of the Zinoviev Trial, was being put to typical use by the General Secretary. A special pilot, Alexander Golovanov, later to rise to be Chief Marshal of the Soviet Air Force until his removal after Stalin’s death in 1953, had been allotted by the NKVD for urgent travel by members of the Central Committee and Government. In 1935 and 1936, he had served in the labor-camp administration in Siberia. Now he was provided with a special multi-engined aircraft, and in 1937 and 1938 this was used to transport arrested officials from the Far East and elsewhere.68 He had lately carried most of Blyukher’s subordinates and their NKVD escorts back to Moscow.
