Marshals of Victory

The paradox is as prevalent today as it ever was — almost all the outstanding military geniuses that Russia has seen have been out of favor with its leaders for most of their careers. There are two reasons for this: they were often more talented than the leaders themselves; and, however great they were, they served Russia rather than themselves or their superiors.

This reality is vividly expressed in the example of two great Russian marshals of the twentieth century. Their names, Georgy Zhukov and Konstantin Rokossovsky, are synonymous with the Soviet Union’s victory in the Second World War. And both were born 100 years ago this month.

Both men had modest beginnings, in poor rural families in central Russia, and won their spurs in the First World War and the Civil War (both on the side of the Reds), and then rose through the ranks.

By the eve of World War Two, both had risen to the rank of marshal, Zhukov already having a victory under his belt against the Japanese at Khalkhin Gol, in Mongolia. While Zhukov was alone in Leningrad, commanding the forces which kept the city out of Nazi hands, the two men served together in the remaining major campaigns of the war: the battle for Moscow in winter 1941; Stalingrad (1942); Kursk (1943); and the advance into Germany in 1944-5. The Vistula-Oder and Berlin Campaigns, in which Rokossovsky commanded the northern forces and Zhukov the center, were instrumental in bringing Hitler to his knees. On May 8, 1945, it was Zhukov who accepted the capitulation of Nazi Germany.

The command of the Victory Parade in Moscow that June 24, though, was given to Rokossovsky. This was both men’s finest hour. Zhukov wrote later in his memoirs, Memories and Reflections: “It was an incomparable moment: when, to a drumbeat, 200 war veterans threw 200 standards of fascist Germany at the foot of the Mausoleum.”

Both men soon found themselves far removed from Moscow and from a leadership which feared their popularity and talent. From 1946-53 Zhukov was ‘exiled’ to commands in the Odessa, then in the Urals military district. Rokossovsky, meanwhile, after a spell as commander of the Northern Army Group in Germany, being of Polish origin, in 1949 became the pro-Soviet Warsaw regime’s defense minister, then deputy prime minister. He was removed during the tensions of 1956.

Zhukov also found himself up against the anti-Stalinist  wave sweeping Eastern Europe at that time. Back in favor under Khrushchev (Zhukov was instrumental in the arrest of Stalin’s henchman Beria), he spent four years at the Defense Ministry, as deputy minister then as minister. Among events which fell within his responsibilities was the 1956 Hungarian revolution (Russian Life, Nov. 1996), whose suppression he organized.

In 1958 he was again removed from his top post (now Khrushchev too saw him as a threat), and lived the rest of his life (until 1974) in modest retirement. He spent it writing his memoirs, which were first not published, then published only in censored form. The unabridged version appeared only in 1989 (15 years after his death), and the first statue to him in 1995, for the 50th anniversary of the end of the war.

Rokossovsky’s life followed a similar course right to the end. He wrote his own memoirs, A Soldier’s Duty, and died just six years before Zhukov in equal obscurity.

Brief Items

The last month of the year was called Dekemvry, from the Latin decem (tenth). This replaced the old Russian names for the month, like studen or studyony (from the word stuzha meaning hard frost, characteristic of this time of year in Russia). These were the names which appeared in old Russian calendars. Other popular names were khmuren (from the adjective khmury, meaning gloomy and uninviting like the December sky) and stuzhailo. Photos from the Great Encyclopedia of Russia.

December is notable as the month in which a number of key figures in Russian culture were born, among them the Russian writer and journalist Nikolai Karamzin (1766-1826), 230 years ago. Karamzin’s many assorted works, including the travelog Letters of a Russian Traveler and the sentimental tale Poor Lisa, contributed to the creation of a new Russian literary language. At the same time, Karamzin is appreciated for his exhaustive labors resulting in the enormous History of the Russian State.

One of the first Russian writers to benefit from Karamzin’s legacy was the great poet and public figure Nikolai Nekrasov, born 175 years ago this month. Both the main themes of Nekrasov’s poetry — St. Petersburg and the peasantry — are full of the pain of the little man, sympathy for his misfortunes and denunciation of social injustice. At the same time, Nekrasov’s poetry is a triumphant hymn to the beauty of Russian nature, his lyric expressing a tender love for Russia.

Not surprisingly, Nekrasov’s work was much loved by the Soviet regime, as was that of Alexander Fadeyev, one of the icons of socialist realism, born 95 years ago. However, Fadeyev’s tragedy was that he was a contemporary of that regime. While he wrote classics of the genre like The Rout and The Young Guard, his membership on numerous committees (he was also head of the Soviet Writer’s Union) left him little time for writing. Ultimately, the burden of decision-making — whether to condemn his less compliant fellow writers to the camps, or to save them from that fate — drove him to drink and an early death by suicide in 1956.

Two artists also celebrated birthdays this month. One hundred and thirty five years ago, Konstantin Korovin, the landscape artist and pupil of Itinerant movement celebrities Alexei Savrasov and Vassily Polenov, was born. As well as painting canvases like By the Balcony and Buying a Dagger, Korovin was an outstanding theatrical artist, creating sets for works like Ruslan and Lyudmila and Snegurochka, which were to become classics of theatrical art. In 1923, Korovin left Russia for France, where he died.

Just five years later, a very different artist (but with a very similar fate) was born. Vassily Kandinsky (1866-1944) is now widely known in Europe and America as one of the founders of abstract art. Kandinsky considered  his mission in art to find new ways of expressing his spiritual origins and a new color harmony to have an effect on the viewers’ souls. Kandinsky also left Russia after the revolution, moving to Germany in 1921, and on to France in 1933, when Hitler came to power.

As for more recent events, Russia this year celebrates (or mourns, depending on your political persuasions) the fifth anniversary of the Belovezh Agreement, seen by many as a dastardly conspiracy, and at best as a measure of expediency to salvage the remains of a dying empire. Presidents Boris Yeltsin of Russia and Leonid Kravchuk of Ukraine, and Belarus Parliament Speaker Stanislav Shushkevich created the Commonwealth of Independent States in a Belarussian forest, dooming the Soviet Union and Mikhail Gorbachev to political oblivion. Just seventeen days later, ex-President Gorbachev vacated his office in the Kremlin and the USSR was formally consigned to the ash heap of history.