Apricot Jam: And Other Stories (44 page)

Now all sorts of accusations are being hurled at party meetings. Once again he
’
s accused of being too harsh (as if this is a flaw in a military commander), of cruelty, of boorish behavior, of failing to show leniency (but how else can you run a military unit?), even of
a hostile approach to the training of cadres:
that he had held back valuable personnel by refusing them promotion. (That from those same slanderers he
’
d refused to promote. Then there are those who slander not out of malice but to whitewash
themselves
in advance.) But here, too, he somehow fought off his attackers.

Then more trouble: a promotion to command a corps. But it
’
s the Belorussian Military District, where almost every single corps commander has been arrested. So it
’
s not a step toward advancement, it
’
s a step toward ruination. Is this how I
’
m going to be finished off—not in some battle, not from the slash of a saber? Yet there
’
s no way of refusing.

The only thing that saved him was that at this very moment, the wave of arrests ended.
(Only after the Twentieth Party Congress did he learn that in the Belorussian Military District in 1939, they had opened a file on Zhukov.)

Suddenly, there
’
s an urgent summons to Moscow. Well, this is
it,
they
’
re going to arrest me. But no! Someone had advised Stalin, and they were sending him to Khalkhin-Gol for his real baptism of fire. Once again he showed his unflinching will in commanding
“
at any price!
”
Without waiting for artillery and infantry, he threw a whole tank division directly at them. Two-thirds of them never made it back, but he gave the Japanese a roasting! Comrade Stalin himself took note of what he had done, particularly by comparison with the Finnish War that had been so badly messed up by incompetent commanders that it seemed an entirely different Red Army was fighting there. Stalin took note of him, and kept him in mind for a long time to come. Stalin received him right after the Finnish War, and he was assigned to command the Kiev Military District—a post of huge importance!

Just six months later, however, and a new order came: Turn over the Kiev District to
Kirponos
and return to Moscow. But Zhukov had nothing to complain about: now he was to be appointed chief of the General Staff!
(And all of it because of Khalkhin-Gol.)

He was sincere when he tried to decline the post:
“
Comrade Stalin! I
’
ve never had any staff experience, even in a low-level job.
”
And now, all at once, the General Staff?
He
’
d never had a bit of military-academic or operational and strategic training in all his forty-five years. How could a simple, honest cavalryman manage the General Staff, particularly now, with so many different branches of troops and new technologies?

Something more made the job frightening: chiefs of the General Staff were being changed every six months. After half a year, Shaposhnikov was replaced by
Meretskov
; now
Meretskov
had been sacked and, rumor had it, arrested—so now is it your turn? (The same sort of leapfrog was going on in the Directorate of Operations.)

Never mind, just take the post! And you
’
ll also be a candidate member of the Central Committee. What trust Stalin had in him!

That meeting with Stalin left a very warm, tender impression.

It was precisely here that he saw the biggest obstacle to writing his memoirs. (Maybe he should just give up the whole thing . . . ?)
How
was he, a general who had had long and close contact with Stalin during the Great War and who had seen his many moods and who had even become his closest deputy, to write about the man who was the head of government, the general secretary of the party, and soon the Supreme Commander of the armed forces? As a veteran of that war, he could scarcely believe how the Supreme Commander had since been dethroned and how a few dimwits were trying to stain his reputation by telling cock-and-bull stories—how he
“
commanded the front lines by looking at the globe . . .
”
(It
’
s true, he did have a large globe in the room next to his office, but there were also maps on the wall, and he would lay out other maps on the desk when he was working. The Supreme Commander would pace from corner to corner, smoking his pipe, and then go to the maps so as to understand clearly the report he was being given or to indicate what he wanted.) Just now they
’
ve thrown out the biggest windbag of them all, kit and caboodle.
And maybe, little by little, they
’
ll be able to restore proper respect for the Supreme Commander. Still, some irreparable damage was done.

And so, if you don
’
t count the members of the Politburo, it was you who had closer professional contact with him than anyone. There were some very bitter moments, to be sure. (Stalin never minced words when he was angry and could offend people undeservedly; the target of his wrath had to have a thick skin. A certain sign that he was in one of his coldblooded, brutal moods was when he carried his unlit pipe in his hand. Then his wrath could pour down on your head at any moment.) But there were also moments when he showed you his amazing, heartfelt trust.

So now the problem was to find a way to write an honest, worthy account of it all.

Something else to think about: the many things that the two of you shared in those very tense—and deceptive!—months before the war also meant that you shared the responsibility for what happened. Was the Supreme Commander wrong? Did he blunder? Did he miscalculate? Then why didn
’
t you set him right? Why didn
’
t you warn him, even if it cost you your own head? Didn
’
t you see that this dogma of
“
Attack! Attack! Attack!
”
which was hammered into everyone in the 1930s and practiced in all the maneuvers till 1940 and 1941, left the enemy with a huge advantage? It meant that we rarely practiced the defense, never practiced the withdrawal, and breaking out of
an encirclement
never entered our heads. Did you support these dogmas as well? You completely ignored that huge concentration of German forces near the border! German aircraft kept flying over Soviet territory, while Stalin accepted Hitler
’
s apologies for his
“
young and inexperienced
”
pilots. What about 1941, when the Germans suddenly needed to look up their World War I cemeteries on our side of the border? It
’
s all right, go ahead and look . . . What an intelligence coup they made out of that! But at the time, Zhukov believed that there
was no man on earth better informed, more profound, and
more shrewd
than
Stalin. And if he hoped to the last to be able to delay a war with Hitler, then who were you to cry out,
“
No!
”
even though it might be your last word?

Who was not paralyzed, even from a distance, by the fearsome name of Stalin? And going to meet him in person was always like taking the final steps up to the gallows. (Still, he did persuade him to release Rokossovsky from a labor camp.) Zhukov was also paralyzed by his lack of confidence in strategic matters, his sense that he was in over his head as chief of the General Staff. He was paralyzed even more, of course, by never knowing how the Supreme Commander might react. He could never guess why he had been summoned. What was the safest way to answer when he was asked,
“
So what do you propose? What are you afraid of?
”
Stalin had little patience for listening to reports and sometimes even seemed disdainful. And there were many things that others reported to Stalin that he did not share with his chief of the General Staff. For him, Zhukov was like Stalin
’
s personal fire department—someone he could suddenly call and send off to deal with some emergency.

During these first hours after war broke out, Stalin was in a state of
confusion that no one had seen before and that he could not conceal. Four hours passed before anyone ventured to order the military districts to resist the enemy, and by then it was too late. What he did was send Zhukov, his chief of the General Staff, rushing to Kiev to save the situation there (
“
We can get by without you here,
”
he told him.) But the whole of the high command was operating simply by hit-and-miss. Three days later, Zhukov had to rush back to Moscow: What needed saving, it seemed, was not the Southwestern but the Western Army Group. Stalin began in a tone of complaint:
“
In a situation like this, what can be done?
”
(Zhukov had the foresight to offer a few pieces of advice, one of which was to form unarmed divisions from the people of Moscow. There were more than enough people available, and going through the Military Committees would take too long. Stalin announced on the spot the formation of a Home Guard.)

Given Stalin
’
s obvious unsteadiness, Zhukov ventured to offer more strong advice. At the end of July, he was bold enough to suggest that Kiev should be abandoned and the troops withdrawn beyond the Dnieper: this would keep some major forces intact and ensure they would not be surrounded. Stalin and Mekhlis both bawled him out for his policy of capitulation. It was then that Stalin dismissed Zhukov as chief of the General Staff and sent him to push back the Germans near Yelnya. (It could have been worse: in those same weeks, about a dozen highly placed and excellent generals who had won victories in the war in Spain were executed; on the other hand,
Meretskov
was suddenly let out of prison.)

The battle near Yelnya was a meat grinder, to be sure, but it was a real operation, not just staff work, and Zhukov won it within a week. (Of course, it would have made more sense just to cut off and surround this Yelnya salient, but in those days we still were lacking confidence.)

As for Kiev, it had to be abandoned in any case, but now with masses of our troops caught in the pocket. (Vlasov did manage to bring a good many of them out
and pull back some 500 kilometers, but nowadays his name can
’
t even be mentioned.) And so if Zhukov had remained in command of the Southwestern Army Group, he might well have had to shoot himself like
Kirponos
.

Something extraordinary happened: when Stalin summoned him at the beginning of September, he admitted that Zhukov had been right about Kiev. And then he went on to dictate an order, top secret, numbered 001919:
Blocking detachments
were to be formed from regiments of NKVD troops; they were to occupy a line in the rear of our forces and fire on anyone who retreated.
(How about that!
But what else could you do if they would not stand and fight to the death but ran off?) And then he sent Zhukov to save Leningrad, which had been cut off. Zhukov had to hand over to others the central sector of the western front that he had saved. The whole time, though, Zhukov held on to his post in General Headquarters, and this allowed him to learn a great deal from people like Shaposhnikov, Vasilevsky, and Vatutin, all of them with a solid military education. (And he wanted to learn, and had to—it was urgent.) He picked up a lot from them, but still remained their shield or battering ram or blunt instrument: they would send Zhukov charging into the most dangerous sector.

Stalin managed the war in its first weeks by giving orders that were not to be questioned, and his mistakes piled up, one after another. He had no idea of strategy and operations and no sense of how to coordinate the operations of various branches of the army (what he had were a few ideas left over from the Civil War). But then he became more cautious. Boris Mikhailovich Shaposhnikov was again named chief of the General Staff. He was the only one of the military leaders whom Stalin addressed politely by his first name and patronymic and the only one allowed to smoke in Stalin
’
s office. (Stalin rarely greeted the others even with a handshake.)

But Stalin respected the members of the Politburo, particularly his favorite, Mekhlis (until Mekhlis made a complete mess of the bridgehead in the eastern Crimea), far more than any of his military leaders. Often when he and a few other members of the Politburo had heard some general give his report, Stalin would say,
“
Leave us for a few minutes while we discuss this.
”
The general would leave and meekly await a decision on the fate of his project or even his head but not feel slighted in the least. We were all communists, but the members of the Politburo, and even
Shcherbakov
, were the highest among us, and it was quite natural that they would make decisions without us. If Stalin was angry at any of them, it was never for long and never final. Voroshilov botched the Finnish War and lost his post for a time, but when Hitler attacked, it was he who was given the whole Northwestern Army Group. He botched that as well, along with the defense of Leningrad, and was dismissed once more. But he came back again as the lucky marshal and most trusted member of Stalin
’
s entourage. It was the same with the two
Semyons
, Timoshenko and the hopeless Budyonny, who made a mess of both the Southwestern and the Reserve Army Groups; yet they all remained members of the General Headquarters as before. Stalin had still not included Vasilevsky or Vatutin in the GHQ, but all the marshals kept their posts there. Zhukov was not promoted to marshal either for saving Leningrad or for saving Moscow or for the victory at Stalingrad. Still, what did rank matter at a time when Zhukov was running
operations far more significant than any the marshals ran? Only after lifting the blockade of Leningrad was Zhukov suddenly promoted. It was not just that he had felt hurt by the delay; he couldn
’
t understand
why
he hadn
’
t been promoted. Was it to make him strive all the harder? Was Stalin afraid to make a mistake, to promote someone prematurely and then not be able to get rid of him? He needn
’
t have worried. The Supreme Commander could not see into the guileless soldier
’
s heart of his Zhukov. In fact, when could he have learned anything about a soldier
’
s heart? He never spent so much as an hour at the front during the war and had never chatted with an ordinary soldier. He would summon Zhukov, who would make a long flight back to Moscow, and after many weeks in the constant roar of the front lines, the silence in Stalin
’
s Kremlin office or at a private supper in Stalin
’
s dacha seemed quite agonizing.