Word: commissars
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...profoundly disillusioned vith the Czar's conduct of the war. To crush active opposition to their rule, the Bolsheviks formed an army out of bands of irregulars, war refugees, peasants, groups of industrial workers and trade unionists. "Even after defeats and retreats," reported Trotsky, the first Bolshevik War Commissar, "the flabby, panicky mob would be transformed in two or three weeks into an efficient fighting force. It needed good commanders, a few dozen experienced fighters, a dozen or so Communists ready to make any sacrifice." Commanders and experienced fighters were drawn from the old Czarist army...
Because other ex-Czarist officers had been going over to the Whites, often with their troops, the Bolsheviks in 1918 appointed commissars to every Red army unit: stone-hard Communists whose job it was to make men and officers accept "the spirit of revolutionary discipline," or else. Said Realist Trotsky: "An army cannot be built without reprisals. Masses of men cannot be led to death unless the army command has the death penalty in its arsenal." Thus began the pernicious commissar system which years later was to bring the army, and Soviet Russia itself, almost to destruction...
...When Commissar Trotsky set about building a peacetime defense force out of the revolutionary Red army, he had revolt on his hands. He was able to form a general staff, training and technical commands out of a nucleus of experienced ex-Imperial army officers, among whom was the future Marshal Mikhail Tukhachevsky. The old irregulars objected to being educated. Georgy Zhukov was an exception. When the chance came for a military course at Moscow's Frunze Academy, he grabbed it. Chief of Staff Boris Shaposhnikov thought him "somewhat slow," but sent him off to Germany to study under General...
...territory in two years, and liberated Soviet Russia. New names had come up beside Zhukov's: Konev, Rokossovsky, Vatutin, Tolbukhin, Malinovsky, Chuikov, Govorov, Voronov and others, almost all men less than 40 years of age. One name that did not make the headlines was that of Secret Police Commissar Serov, who came close in the wake of Zhukov's victories. His assignment : to liquidate all anti-Soviet elements...
...dinners Vishinsky ordered Zhukov about, and Zhukov dutifully read speeches handed to him by Zampolit officers. He did not gag when Stalin took credit for the great victories. The Zampolit organization had grown to huge proportions and was again the terror of the Red army. Into East Germany came Commissar Serov, to superintend the liquidation of dissidents, the dismantling of factories and museums, the kidnaping of scientists and the setting-up of spy schools. Politically, the Red army was back where it started...