Why was Tsaritsyn called Stalingrad?

The failure of Stalin on the Tsaritsyno front of the Civil War turned into tragic consequences in the Great Patriotic War.

In Russia, some political groups more or less prominently marked the 70th anniversary of Stalin’s death. A month earlier, on the day of the 80th anniversary of the victory in the Battle of Stalingrad, a bust of Stalin was erected on Mamaev Kurgan in the city of Volgograd. Before that, at the entrances to Volgograd, temporary signs were strengthened – “Stalingrad”. Every anniversary there are rumors about the renaming of the city.

This time attention was drawn to statements on the Web that Tsaritsyn was named Stalingrad because … Someone even gave a link to Wikipedia. I looked – for sure: “In honor of the recognition of Stalin’s merits in the defense of the city, on April 10, 1925, Tsaritsyn was renamed Stalingrad.”

Wikipedia is mass knowledge, mass information. In this case, misinformation.

With the outbreak of the Civil War, it became obvious that the revolutionary theory of “universal arming of the people” would not bring success – a regular army based on one-man command was needed, regular officers were needed for management. Many of them were imprisoned not for speaking out against the new government, but simply as “class alien elements.” Chairman of the Revolutionary Military Council of the Republic, the first People’s Commissar for Naval Affairs (1918 – 1925) Trotsky offered to release them. With the support of Lenin, despite the protests of some Bolshevik leaders, who saw only “counter-revolutionaries” in the officers. Thus, 75,000 former officers of the tsarist army, including 775 generals and 1,726 officers of the General Staff, came to the service of the Workers ‘and Peasants’ Red Army. In total, almost half (43%) of the officers of the tsarist army. The absolute majority of front commanders and chiefs of staff of fronts, commanders of armies and chiefs of staff of armies, commanders of divisions and chiefs of staff of divisions are former tsarist officers. They were called “warriors”. It was also thanks to them that the Civil War was won.

Tsaritsyn was an important industrial and agricultural center, a major transport hub on the Volga, connecting Moscow with the southern regions of the country, from where food and fuel came. Trotsky appointed Lieutenant General of the General Staff Snesarev as commander of the North Caucasian Military District. Snesarev gathered scattered detachments of the Reds into a united front against the White Army advancing on Tsaritsyn. With headquarters, communications, intelligence – as it should be in military science and practice. But then Stalin arrived in Tsaritsyn – authorized by the All-Russian Central Executive Committee (All-Russian Central Executive Committee) for the procurement and export of grain from the southern regions to industrial centers. And he began to interfere in military affairs. Partly, probably, because Snesarev was appointed by Trotsky, who treated Stalin condescendingly. In mid-summer, the Military Council of the North Caucasian Military District was created under the chairmanship of Stalin. As a result, Snesarev was removed from his post. And they appointed the Bolshevik leader Voroshilov, who had not commanded anything before, except for a detachment of Lugansk workers, whom he brought to Tsaritsyn, was appointed commander of the Tsaritsyn Front.

Stalin and Voroshilov renamed the Military Council of the North Caucasus Military District into the Military Revolutionary Council of the Southern Front and refused to follow the orders of the Revolutionary Military Council of the Republic. The Tsaritsyno Cheka began arrests of military experts.

“We have successes in all armies, except for Tsaritsyn, where we have a colossal superiority of forces, but complete anarchy at the top. Voroshilov can command a regiment, but not an army,” Trotsky, chairman of the Revolutionary Military Council, reported to Lenin, chairman of the Council of People’s Commissars.

In October 1918, Stalin was recalled from the Southern Front. Voroshilov was removed from the post of commander, was appointed commander of the 10th Army, but was soon removed from there.

Subsequently, at the VIII Party Congress (March 18-23, 1919), Lenin sharply criticized the actions of Stalin and Voroshilov near Tsaritsyn: “We have sixty thousand losses. This is terrible … You say: we heroically defended Tsaritsyn … But it is clear that we cannot give sixty thousand each, and that maybe we would not have to give these sixty thousand if there were specialists, if there was a regular army ” .

June 17, 1919 Tsaritsyn fell.

So why and how was Tsaritsyn renamed Stalingrad in April 1925? Because, as Lenin wrote in the famous “Letter to the Congress” at the end of 1922: “Comrade. Stalin, having become General Secretary, concentrated immense power in his hands. Already in January 1925, his power was enough to remove the recently all-powerful Trotsky from the post of chairman of the Revolutionary Military Council and People’s Commissar of Defense. And right there, his like-minded people and toadies from the Tsaritsyn party apparatus began a campaign to rename Tsaritsyn to Stalingrad.

But Stalin could not but understand that his power was under threat. Strength is in the army. And the commanding staff of the Red Army did not recognize any military leadership abilities for him. He was treated with skepticism, his elevation was perceived with irony: everyone knew and remembered that he had failed the defense of Tsaritsyn.

That is, Stalin had no authority in the army. Clearly, he could not bear such a situation. I will quote the author of the book “Twilight” A. N. Yakovlev, member of the Politburo of the Central Committee of the CPSU, chairman of the Commission for the Rehabilitation of Victims of Political Repression: “Stalin was afraid of the army and hated it.”

The generals of the victorious army are dangerous for any dictator. Their fame, their prestige among the people can turn heads, lead to thoughts about a military coup. The destruction of generals capable of deposing a ruler, as the Praetorian Guard in ancient Rome deposed emperors, is a common practice in the actions of dictators, the law of their “safety measures”. But a hundred times more dangerous are commanders who know that their ruler from a military point of view is nobody, nothing and nothing to call, remember that his attempts to lead military operations always turned into failure, embarrassment, losses. From the point of view of dictators, such generals should be removed immediately, and the officers of the army, which is full of such rumors and conversations, should be scared to shiver.

From the end of the 1920s, Stalin began a policy of repression against the military leadership.

In the second half of the 1930s there were mass arrests of commanders and political workers…

On November 29, 1938, People’s Commissar of Defense Voroshilov stated at a meeting of the Military Council:

“Throughout 1937 and 1938, we had to mercilessly purge our ranks … For all the time we purged more than 4 tens of thousands of people.”

That is, in less than two years – more than 40,000 officers! From the top leadership – the people’s commissar of the Navy, 3 deputy people’s commissars of defense, two deputy heads of the Political Directorate of the Red Army, head of the Political Directorate of the Navy. Of the 108 members of the Military Council, by November 1938, only 10 people remained from the previous composition. And further: 16 commanders of military districts, 26 their deputies and assistants, 5 commanders of fleets, 8 chiefs of military academies, 25 chiefs of staff of districts, fleets and their deputies, 33 corps commanders, 76 division commanders, 40 brigade commanders, 291 regiment commanders …

The military knew what it meant. But only Fedor Raskolnikov spoke openly – during the Civil War, the commander of the Volga and Caspian flotillas, the commander of the Baltic Fleet. After the war, he switched to diplomatic work and in 1938, anticipating his imminent arrest, stayed abroad with his family. He died in September 1939. A month later, the émigré newspaper New Russia published his famous Open Letter to Stalin. In the Soviet Union, it saw the light 48 years later, at the beginning of perestroika, in the Ogonyok magazine, and became an information and political bomb.

“On the eve of the war, you are destroying the Red Army… You have beheaded the Red Army and the Red Navy,” Raskolnikov wrote. – You killed the most talented commanders, brought up on the experience of world and civil wars … You exterminated the heroes of the civil war, who transformed the Red Army with the latest technology. At the moment of the greatest military danger, you continue to exterminate the leaders of the army, the middle command staff and junior commanders.

Before the attack of Nazi Germany on the Soviet Union, captains commanded some divisions in the Red Army. Of course, they, yesterday’s commanders of battalions and batteries, could not cope with the duties assigned to them. And therefore, our army, having an absolute superiority in technology and manpower, suffered crushing defeats in the first year of the war.

By June 22, 1941, the alignment of forces near the western borders of the USSR was as follows (according to the All-Russian Research Institute of Records and Archives):

German tanks and assault guns – 4364. Ours – 15,687.

German aircraft – 4795. Ours – 10 743.

German guns and mortars – 42,601. Ours – 59,787.

Nevertheless, according to German data, in the first six months of the war alone, 3,806,860 Soviet soldiers and officers were taken prisoner. The site “The Course of War” of the Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation, citing this figure in a rounded manner, clarifies: “In addition to military personnel, the Germans also took into account civilians captured in the area of ​​​​combat operations, personnel of special forces of various civilian departments (means of communication, sea and river fleets, defensive construction, civil aviation, communications, healthcare). (https://mil.ru/winner_may/history/[email protected])

I will conclude the notes with another brief quote from the book “Twilight” by a member of the Politburo of the Central Committee of the CPSU A. N. Yakovlev:

“By the beginning of the war of 1941-1945, the Soviet army was beheaded by Stalin and turned out to be incapable of combat.”

Sergei Baimukhametov.

On the picture: monument to the heroes of the defense of Red Tsaritsyn.