Stalin and the Red Army General Staff in the Thirties

Abstract

The Red Army generals, no less than the Hitlerite ones, were mere cogs in the state machine and were often used as tools to destroy their fellows; they were certainly not the men to speak out against the injustices, the inhumanity and the atrocities that were going on around them. From 1927 to 1937 the Red Army General Staff formed part of Voroshilov’s Commissariat for Military and Naval Affairs, and served as the general staff not only for the Red Army and Air Force, for the Air Force formed part of the Army, but for the Soviet Navy as well. Poland and Rumania both refused to have Red Army troops within their frontiers, and the Baltic States rejected any guarantee that included the Soviet Union as a signatory. Finally, there can be no doubt that Communism under Lenin and Stalin, particularly under Stalin, arrived at clear understanding of the place of diplomacy and war in the furtherance of its aims.