Soviet Staff Officer

By Ivan Nikititch Krylov

Few accounts of the Red Army’s struggle during the Second World War have been translated into English giving this fascinating account a special rarity. Ivan Krylov’s memoirs were originally published in 1951, and he recounts his varied service in the Russian Army his demotion from Officer grade to the ranks, became becoming a journalist with Red Star. With his journalist access he was privy to much more information than the average soldier and he recounts the higher workings of the Red Army as well as the horrors of the front, from the Russian heartlands all the way to victory in Berlin.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Eschenburg Press
• Release date: Apr 7, 2017
• ISBN: 9781787204553

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Text originally published in 1951 under the same title.

© Eschenburg Press 2017, all rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted by any means, electrical, mechanical or otherwise without the written permission of the copyright holder.

Publisher’s Note

Although in most cases we have retained the Author’s original spelling and grammar to authentically reproduce the work of the Author and the original intent of such material, some additional notes and clarifications have been added for the modern reader’s benefit.

We have also made every effort to include all maps and illustrations of the original edition the limitations of formatting do not allow of including larger maps, we will upload as many of these maps as possible.

SOVIET STAFF OFFICER

BY

IVAN NIKITITCH KRYLOV

Translated by Edward Fitzgerald

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Contents

TABLE OF CONTENTS 3

Chapter One — STRATEGIC CONFERENCE IN THE KREMLIN 4

Chapter Two — THE CONSPIRACY OF THE ‘CHESS PLAYERS’ 11

Chapter Three — AUTUMN 1940 19

Chapter Four — ITALY ATTACKS GREECE 25

Chapter Five — A GAME OF POKER 29

Chapter Six — AND A BRIDGE PARTY 33

Chapter Seven — THE DEATH OF NATASHA 37

Chapter Eight — THE DECISIVE MONTHS 41

Chapter Nine — THE TWO BANQUETS OF THE POLITBURO 49

Chapter Ten — STALIN LEAVES THE WINGS 57

Chapter Eleven — SNOW STORM IN JUNE 65

Chapter Twelve — THE OUTBREAK OF WAR 80

Chapter Thirteen — COUNCIL OF WAR IN THE KREMLIN 88

Chapter Fourteen — MY TRIAL AND CONVICTION 95

Chapter Fifteen — SERGEANT KRYLOV 101

Chapter Sixteen — THE BATTLE OF KREMENTCHUG 113

Chapter Seventeen — THE BATTLE OF POLTAVA 120

Chapter Eighteen — KAZAN HOSPITAL 130

Chapter Nineteen — THE JAPANESE OFFER TO MEDIATE 141

Chapter Twenty — THE TIDE OF HISTORY 146

Chapter Twenty-One — JOURNALIST KRYLOV—STALINGRAD 151

Chapter Twenty-Two — STALIN BECOMES A SOVIET MARSHAL 157

Chapter Twenty-Three — THE DISSOLUTION OF THE COMINTERN 163

Chapter Twenty-Four — IN THE FOREST OF BOLSHAKOVKA 171

Chapter Twenty-Five — THE ‘MAYAK’ CIRCLE 177

Chapter Twenty-Six — PROPAGANDIST FOR DEMOCRACY 183

Chapter Twenty-Seven — THE ATOMIC BOMB AGAIN 187

Chapter Twenty-Eight — THE DENOUEMENT APPROACHES 192

Chapter Twenty-Nine — ON THE EVE OF YALTA 197

Chapter Thirty — I LEAVE FOR GERMANY 202

Chapter Thirty-One — FROM KÖNIGSBERG TO BERLIN 206

REQUEST FROM THE PUBLISHER 212

Chapter One — STRATEGIC CONFERENCE IN THE KREMLIN

THE spring of 1940 in Moscow was magnificent. The few straggly bushes along the cracked and ancient walls of the Kremlin flowered as I had never known them to flower before. Growing from a soil hardened by the frost and watered by the snow these Russian bushes have a somewhat acrid and penetrating smell. It always reminds me of the time when I was seconded to our military attaché in Paris, General Krantz-Ventzov. His wife was very fond of a perfume by Caron known as ‘Narcisse noir’, which had a strangely similar odour.

Walking across the courtyard of the Kremlin on my way to see Marshal Voroshilov it occurred to me that the house of Caron did not exist at the time of the Napoleonic invasion of 1812, otherwise the Corsican, whose fugitive shade still haunted these walls, might have been reminded of that perfume of his own capital before disappearing in the mists of the Beresina and the smoke of Waterloo.

My thoughts turned to Marshal Voroshilov, who had summoned me to the Kremlin to hear my views on the battle which had just opened up on the Dutch, German and Belgian frontiers. Several other officers of the General Staff who had made a special study of Franco-German problems had also been summoned with me; Colonel Vorobiev and Captain Tulpanov, close collaborators of General Smirnov, the head of Department III of the General Staff; and Captain Muraviev and Commandant Pashkov, officers of Department IV, were to join us at the end of the conference. They were engaged at the plenary session of the Presidium of the Supreme Council at which, as technical advisers, they were providing details of the state of France’s military preparations.

I found Marshal Voroshilov smiling and cheerful. He was going grey at the temples and his eyes always reminded me of a stoat closing in for the kill. Marshal Shaposhnikov, the Chief of the General Staff, was with him. Generals Smirnov, Pavlov, Kurenko and Mirsky, a number of other officers whom I didn’t know, and a civilian whom I recognized as our Permanent Secretary at the Foreign Office, Sobolev, an intimate friend of Voroshilov, were also present. We just had time to swallow a few ham sandwiches and then Voroshilov, who had never stopped smoking, addressed us:

‘Comrades, the war is now entering into a decisive phase. As President of the Supreme War Council I have summoned Comrade Sobolev to inform us about the political situation. Comrade Shaposhnikov will speak about the strategic situation.’

I knew Sobolev well. He had been secretary to our Embassy at Paris and our representative at the League of Nations. He had the reputation of being one of our most skilled diplomats. In fact, he was a sort of éminence grise to the President of the Council and our Foreign Secretary Molotov. Caustic and brilliant, erudite, adaptable and discerning, he towered above all those new ambassadors recruited by Molotov heaven knows where through the mediation of his old secretary at the Central Committee of the Party, Poskrebichev. He and Molotov understood each other, and when there were important decisions to be taken or conferences of the General Staff or of the Supreme War Council to be attended, Sobolev almost always represented him.

Sobolev opened his battered leather case and began at once:

‘The French Premier Paul Reynaud has got into touch with our Chargé d’Affaires in Paris through an English journalist attached to his office. He proposes to send a new French Ambassador to Moscow at once, Alexis Léger, to open up negotiations of the utmost importance. We have replied that as Alexis Léger is not very well-known to us we should prefer to see Pierre Cot, a reliable friend of the Soviet Union, at such a post. Paul Reynaud has already agreed in principle to our suggestion...’

Colonel Vorobiev interrupted:

‘Paul Reynaud is nothing but a flunkey of London. What is the political sense of such a proposal? Who is the English journalist referred to?’

‘The English journalist is a certain Geoffrey Fraser. He was expelled from Berlin by the Gestapo at the beginning of the Hitler regime after having been arrested at the direct orders of Count Helldorf, Nazi Police President of Berlin. The political sense of Reynaud’s proposal is simple. Reynaud understands perfectly well, of course, that we are bound by our agreement of August 1939 and that there is no question of denouncing it at the moment. The Soviet-German Agreement stands. At the same time he doesn’t want Germany to feel herself completely free in the east so that she could hurl herself on France with the whole weight of her army. If Pierre Cot were sent to us as Ambassador Hitler would be obliged to increase the number of German divisions stationed on our frontier.’

‘How many German divisions are there on our frontier at the moment?’ Voroshilov asked Shaposhnikov.

‘Seventeen, but according to our information five of them are preparing to leave for the west...I have given orders to begin preparations for our summer manœuvres and to make a start with the building of 89 air fields. There will be 23 in Estonia, 34 in Latvia, and 22 in Lithuania. The German General Staff will be obliged to take that into account...’

Sobolev began again:

‘We have been informed in Paris that, come what may, the negotiations between Pierre Cot and Molotov must succeed in holding between 40 and 50 German divisions in the east if France is not to go down under the shock of the German attack.

‘Is that true?’ asked Voroshilov. ‘Don’t forget that the Belgian and Dutch divisions must be added to the French.’

He turned to me:

‘What do you think, Captain?’

‘The Belgian and Dutch armies will be crushed on their own soil’, I replied. ‘The terrain is too restricted to allow of their being withdrawn into France in order to save them for a decisive battle somewhere along the Marne as was the case in 1914. Politically and psychologically a favourable retreat is impossible. The Dutch and Belgians are passive combatants. They will fight only to defend their own territory. They will ask the French for assistance...The state of the French army, both its material and its effectives, is such that we shall have to pin down at least half the German army in the east if the French are to have a chance of holding out against a lightning infiltration of the Wehrmacht...’

‘You are quite right, Captain’, said Marshal Shaposhnikov, ‘But we mustn’t forget another side of the question: if the French army is crushed, and if after having crushed it Hitler turns to attack us, our army will also not be able to withstand the full shock of the Wehrmacht. A one-front war would be as fatal for us as for France. We also need a second front if we are to withstand a possible German attack. As long as the French army exists that second front exists too. Let us therefore do all we can to prevent the French army from being crushed...’

I noticed an expression of annoyance on Voroshilov’s face, and he interrupted:

‘I have read the latest report of Dekanozov and the record of his talk with Ribbentrop. War against us is out of the question. Mein Kampf is out of fashion. The Germans will crush France militarily. England will be isolated and forced to sign a compromise peace. That peace will mean that Germany will have the whole of Europe at her disposal with the exception of part of the Balkans which she will leave to us as our zone of influence, half of Africa and the Asiatic part of the British Empire, with the exception of Burma and Malaya, which will go to the Japanese as well as French Indo-China. The Germans would like to join with the British in exploiting their empire fifty-fifty. They no longer want to go east for their living space. In taking over the British Empire they will inevitably come up against the United States, which regards itself as the legitimate successor of the British. The German-Japanese seizure of the remnants of the British Empire would mean economic strangulation at once for the U.S.A. Thus this war will soon be followed by another one, that of Germany and Japan against the United States. We shall have time to prepare ourselves for our role as the grave-diggers of the capitalist world and to give it the coup de grâce when its end is near. That is our historic role. Whoever fails to understand that could easily become a traitor to our cause...We are obliged to take all necessary precautions against a possible German aggression. The army is seeing to that. Comrade Shaposhnikov, as the Chief of our General Staff, has received instructions to take the appropriate measures on his own responsibility.

‘However, we must be careful. The Germans must not be given the impression that we are preparing a coup in their rear at a time when they are engaged with all their forces against the French. If they thought that, they might change the dispositions of their general plan and attack us even before they have finally crushed the Anglo-Saxons. That would be a great misfortune for our cause. In my opinion the order to build 89 air fields near the German frontier is a grave political error. Incidentally I shall ask the Politburo to suspend that dangerous measure and to postpone our summer manœuvres at the same time.

‘One way or the other the French will be crushed, and we must not risk provoking an armed conflict with Germany merely in order to prolong their resistance for a few days. I see no reason to ask them to send Pierre Cot to us. There is no hope whatever that the French army can become the pivot of a second front, as it was in 1914-18, if Germany really does attack us. And if she should I am, incidentally, firmly convinced that our army would be able to repulse the attack and throw the Germans out on its own without any assistance from the Allies...’

Shaposhnikov intervened again:

‘My information is quite different from that of Comrade Dekanozov. Our information service in Berlin has been able to get into touch with a very highly-placed Nazi in the immediate entourage of Hitler and Rudolf Hess. He claims that the ideas of Mein Kampf are still fully in force, and that Hitler still intends to carve out his German India in the east by destroying our country, exterminating our people and seizing the living space necessary for a German domination of the world. The co-existence of the Soviet Union and Hitlerite Germany is of a purely provisional character and it can be prolonged only artificially—unless, of course, the two countries were to come to a political, economic and ideological rapprochement.

‘I don’t think that that can be the intention of Comrade Voroshilov and, above all, not of Comrade Stalin—with whom I spoke yesterday about the building of the air fields, of which he completely approved—because he has no confidence in the word of Hitler or in the agreements we have signed with Germany.

‘I will go still further. I think we should ask the Politburo to authorize credits for the building of another series of air fields, 75 in number, in order that we can station two-thirds of our air strength at our frontiers. I shall also insist that the Politburo confirm my order for the manœuvres. The Germans have themselves held manœuvres in the Memel-Königsberg area and we have never protested. There is no reason whatever why they should protest against ours...I also support the proposal of Comrade Sobolev with regard to the nomination of Pierre Cot. That is a step strictly limited to the sphere of diplomatic manœuvre by which we risk nothing and might gain a great deal...’

‘We have already drawn up terms of reference for our negotiations with Pierre Cot’, put in Sobolev. ‘We shall demand: 1, The recognition of the terms of our peace with Finland; 2, The recognition of our exclusive zone of influence in the Baltic countries; 3, The recognition of our interests in the Dardanelles; 4, The return of Bessarabia to the Soviet Union; 5, The recognition of our exclusive zone of influence in Romania, Bulgaria, Greece and Albania; 6, The participation of the Soviet Union in the exploitation of the Iraqi oil wells; and 7, Joint action in Turkey to enforce the resignation of Ismet Inonu.’

The conference ended late in the evening. The majority of those present supported the proposal of Marshal Shaposhnikov to approve the negotiations with Paul Reynaud on the nomination of Pierre Cot, the building of air fields and the holding of the summer manœuvres on the German frontier. Marshal Voroshilov voted against. In taking leave of Shaposhnikov he stiffened in a military salute and avoided shaking hands with him.

I left the Kremlin with Captain Muraviev of Department IV of the General Staff. He was in charge of Section H5 of our Information Service, Germany-Italy-Hungary, and had just returned from a visit to Berlin and Rome. I took advantage of the opportunity to ask him about the highly-placed informant Shaposhnikov had mentioned. He smiled.

‘Our Department IV has the same luck as the Tsar’s information service. You remember the Adjutant of the Austrian General Staff who entered our service on the eve of the 1914-18 war? Well, the man Marshal Shaposhnikov was talking about is much more important than Colonel Redl was. He’s not a soldier, incidentally, but a civilian; a high official of the Nazi Party; one of the six. Hitler, Göring, Hess, Goebbels, Himmler and Borman...Guess for yourself. It isn’t Hitler. That’s as much as I can tell you’, and he laughed.

‘The most amusing thing’, he went on, ‘is to read the reports of our Ambassador Dekanozov’s talks as furnished by our informant and to compare them with the reports Dekanozov sends back to Molotov, in which he skips a great deal of the conversation. One day Dekanozov had a long talk with Hitler on the subject of the racial purity of the inhabitants of the Caucasus, and in particular of the Georgians and the Armenians. He wanted to convince the Führer that the agreement of August 1939 was safely based on the Aryan intimacy of the two Heads of State. You ought to know, by the way, that the Aryan origin of Dekanozov is more than doubtful—like Stalin’s own’ he added.

‘What?’ I interjected.

‘Yes, Stalin’s name, Djugashvili, means son of the Israelite in Georgian. Shvili means son and Djuga means Israelite. The Djugashvili family, orthodox Christians, were descended from Jewish mountain tribes in the Caucasus converted to Christianity at the beginning of the nineteenth century.’

I then asked whether he was in agreement with Shaposhnikov.

‘Certainly’, he replied. ‘He’s our most brilliant military brain. Outwardly a simple officer of a provincial garrison, his knowledge is enormous, and in addition he has a deep understanding for political affairs. Voroshilov hates him. When Tukhashevsky, Uborevitch, Primakov and Eidemann were put on trial he wanted to add Shaposhnikov to the list of suspects and send him to Siberia with his friend Colonel Rokossovsky, but Stalin was very much opposed to the idea because he knew that Shaposhnikov was the only man who could take the place of Tukhashevsky and his friends. Shaposhnikov’s a brain for you. He was trained at the Imperial General Staff Academy, and but for the revolution he would have been a brilliant general, whereas Tukhashevsky would have remained a very ordinary officer.

‘Tukhashevsky was an ambitious man, clever and cunning, who sought to exploit the revolutionary situation to carve himself out a Bonapartist career. He didn’t even trouble to hide it. Shaposhnikov, on the other hand, has a horror of politics. He joined the Communist Party much as a man might join a philatelist group in San Marino, where everybody collects stamps. I once saw him take the floor at a meeting of the communist cell of the General Staff. The conduct of an officer who had got married eleven times—in every garrison where he had been stationed prior to his transfer to the General Staff—was under discussion. Shaposhnikov demanded his expulsion from the party and his reduction to the ranks. His proposal was rejected by the cell, because most of our officers have been married at least three times in various towns.

‘You see,’ he went on in a more serious tone, ‘Shaposhnikov never occupies himself with politics, but he’s an ardent patriot. He loves Russia above all, and he’s quite capable of risking his life in any action designed to save the country. He got his craze for a Franco-Russian alliance from the Tsarist army. The weakening of France’s position in Europe, which he regards as temporary only, has done nothing to diminish it. He still believes that an alliance with France is our essential trump. He hates the Germans because he believes that Germany, whether under Weimar or under the Nazis, will always be Russia’s enemy. In private conversation he has even said that the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk was the gravest error committed by the Soviet Government. Our hundred percenters, Stalin included, are all convinced Germanophiles in the sense that they believe that the Russo-German tandem would be invincible. And Lenin said on one occasion: A Russo-German alliance, a close agreement between the two countries, both Soviet, would sound the death knell of the capitalist world. The first day of such an alliance would be the dawn of a new era in the history of mankind. But Shaposhnikov is firmly convinced that, Soviet or no, the Germans would always be the exploiters and the Russians the exploited in any Russo-German alliance, because the average German hates and despises Russia.’

‘Yes, but Shaposhnikov is obliged to follow the policy of the Politburo.’

‘Of course, but he’s very clever. He believes a Russo-German war inevitable—and necessary. I am convinced that if he had the chance he would attack the Germans tomorrow. He’s too closely watched, and he hasn’t forgotten what happened to the unfortunate Blücher, who believed that war with Japan was necessary and provoked the two-hills incident which ultimately cost him his life. Shaposhnikov won’t commit any such imprudence. The day it was announced that Blücher had hanged himself in his cell in the inner prison of the N.K.V.D. in the Lubianka he wept. For he was very fond of Blücher as a talented general, a man of the people and an ardent patriot like himself. He probably said to himself: Blücher’s sacrifice has not been in vain. The Politburo has sent Lazar Mekhlis, the Chief of our Political Directorate, and Zhukov, one of our best generals, to Vladivostock to stop the Japanese and save our positions in Mongolia. If I had been in Blücher’s place I should have acted in the same spirit, but more prudently.’

‘You think therefore that Marshal Voroshilov is right to oppose Shaposhnikov’s proposals?’

Muraviev looked me straight in the face.

‘Listen, Krylov: I don’t know you very well, but I’m told you love Russia and hate the Germans. We are all living in a country in which the Communist Party exercises an absolute dictatorship and pursues a policy which has nothing directly to do with the interests of our country and which sometimes even damages its interests. We can’t fight against that policy openly and directly, but we soldiers have the possibility of fighting it indirectly and without running any risks. The war will make our influence preponderant and Stalin will be obliged to change his methods at home and be guided by Russia’s old interests abroad.’

I parted from Muraviev opposite the Far Eastern University. Seven o’clock struck. The yellow and grey twilight of Moscow descended over the square. An inoffensive-looking citizen staggered from bench to bench trying to engage in conversation with the couples sitting there in what was once called ‘The Love Market’—looking for his lost pipe.

A week later I met Captain Muraviev again. The Battle of France was in full swing. The Germans had already broken through at Sedan. The French army was reeling back under the shock. Muraviev told me the latest news: the Politburo had refused to agree to the nomination of Pierre Cot. Our summer manœuvres on the German frontier were not to take place. But Marshal Shaposhnikov had succeeded in persuading them, against the opposition of Voroshilov, that it was necessary to build his 166 first-line air fields.

Muraviev also told me that our military attaché in Paris had learned from one of his informants that two members of the French Chamber of Deputies, Fernand Laurent and Ybarnégaray, had threatened Paul Reynaud with the overthrow of the government if he persisted in his intention of sending Pierre Cot to Moscow as French Ambassador.

Chapter Two — THE CONSPIRACY OF THE ‘CHESS PLAYERS’

I PASSED the summer of 1940 on sick leave in the little town Eupatoria in the Crimea. There are salt-water springs there, and rheumatic cases are sent to take the baths. Long-standing rheumatism contracted during my stay in the Siberian garrison town of Tchita gave me a good deal of trouble. I accepted the invitation of our General Staff doctor to stay at a little place he had near Eupatoria and take treatment.

Eupatoria is a strange town. It is the religious centre of a sect known as the ‘Karaimes’, who have their temple there, called the ‘Kenasse’, which is the home of the head of the sect, the ‘Khakhame’. One of my friends, Commandant David Saraf, was a ‘Karaime’. He often spoke to me about this sect, its origins and its history. It is a small semi-religious, semi-ethnical group related to the Turks, the Tartars, the Armenians and the Jews, and it makes a cult of the Bible. Strange customs inherited from the Tartars of the Nogai Steppes still survive in its practices.

It was possible to get the newspapers regularly in Eupatoria, and I read the Iɀvestia, the Pravda and the Kraɀnaya Zvieɀda, the organ of our General Staff. Thus, buried in the Crimean steppes, I was still able to follow the course of the war.

The invalids taking the baths at Eupatoria were almost exclusively officials from Moscow, Leningrad, Kharkov and Kiev. Near Eupatoria there was the thermal mud-bath spa at Saki, which housed a whole colony of General Staff officers, all victims of their periods of duty in the Siberian garrisons or in the Pripet district with its marshes and its baleful climate.

At the beginning of July, I received an invitation from my old friend Lieutenant-Colonel Vassily Zmurko, Chief of Sector 7 of our Information Service, to come over to Saki and visit him. It appeared that the officers on sick leave there were organizing an amateur dramatic performance, a piece entitled ‘Marussia Boguslavka’ whose theme was taken from the period of the wars of the Zaporogue Cossacks against the Turks.

I was rather surprised that officers of the Red Army could find no more suitable piece to perform. Marussia Boguslavka, the heroine who gives the piece its title, was a Ukrainian woman carried off by the Tartars and sold into the harem of a Turkish Pasha in Anatolia. During an expedition of the Cossacks against the Turks the Pasha’s town was taken by storm and the Cossack Ataman was Marussia’s brother. He ordered the extermination of all the inhabitants of the town, and Marussia looked on indifferently as the Cossacks slaughtered the three children she had borne to the Pasha. It was a musical piece, and my friend Vassily, who was taking part in the performance, had an opportunity of showing off his fine baritone voice in the aria, ‘The grey cuckoo sounds in the dawn and our comrades cast into chains by the infidel, weep bitter tears and bemoan their fate.’

I found the whole thing pretty tiresome, and I was anxious to talk to Vassily, who had just come from Moscow and who, in consequence of his position as Chief of Sector 7 of our Information Service (‘Anglo-Saxon countries’) might be expected to have all the latest news of the international situation. But Vassily, surrounded by the ladies, insisted on staying at the buffet. There was vodka and apple brandy, and mackerel à la Grecque washed down with a Crimean wine called ‘Cahors’. I was obliged to join in the party and to chat and dance with the ladies in a little wooden pavilion which had been turned into a dance hall.

I danced with Vassily’s wife, Polina.

‘I’m glad to see Vassia in such a good mood’, she said. ‘In Moscow he was always so on edge, particularly after his last talk with Marshal Shaposhnikov. By the way, that’s what he wants to talk to you about.’

‘Oh! Why?’

‘I really can’t say. Vassia is so secretive. That’s his job, of course, but I do know that he’s very anxious to talk to you about it as soon as possible.’

I grew more and more interested. At about two o’clock in the morning the dancing ceased and Vassily gave me his attention at last.

‘It’s Sunday tomorrow’, he said. ‘Stay with us in Saki overnight. I want to talk to you.’

‘You could have invited me simply for tomorrow without making me suffer your amateur theatricals.’

‘Don’t be annoyed about that. It was necessary. We mustn’t create the impression that we met