Word: zhukov
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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Like a receding thunderstorm, the echoes of the Zhukov affair grew fainter and fainter. No one seemed to be in any hurry to find a job for Russia's greatest living soldier, and by week's end Pravda was devoting only half a page to denunciations of the marshal's sins. Four and a half years after Stalin's death, Nikita Khrushchev stood alone and unchallenged...
There were, of course, a few unavoidable absences. Marshal Georgy Zhukov was nowhere to be seen, and Yugoslavia's Marshal Josip Broz Tito, suffering from a case of lumbago aggravated by the ticklishness of his international position, stayed at home in Belgrade. But to show how civilized the Soviet state has become, the audience even included three discredited Khrushchev foes-Georgy Malenkov, Dmitry Shepilov and Lazar Kaganovich (who, when asked about his present work, replied: "That would be very difficult to explain just now"). On the dais, clustered around Red China's Mao Tse-tung, sat the leaders...
...Central Committee announced that Zhukov had been dropped forthwith from the Presidium. "The secretariat of the Central Committee has been instructed to provide him with other work...
...cult of Comrade Zhukov's personality was cultivated in the Soviet army with his personal participation. With the help of sycophants and flatterers his person and his role in the Great Patriotic War were overglorified...
Sharing the Blame. The jackals were soon at work. In the Central Committee itself, reported Pravda, many of Zhukov's oldest and closest military comrades-among them Marshals Timoshenko, Rokossovsky and Sokolovsky-"pointed out the serious shortcomings of Zhukov's work . . . unanimously condemned his wrong, unpartylike behavior." Marshal Ivan Konev suddenly discovered that Zhukov shared the blame with Stalin for Soviet reverses early in World War II, did not deserve much credit for the Stalingrad victory, had hindered more than helped at the conquest of Berlin. All in all, Konev concluded, "it would be absurd to affirm Zhukov...