In the past few months hundreds, probably thousands, of public servants have been shot in Soviet Russia. The executed include the most eminent personages in the Soviet government, the majority of whom were heroes of the Russian revolution. It is as if, in America, the Roosevelt administration were to shoot half the cabinet, a score or so of the United States Senate, the Presidents of a dozen leading corporations, and the head of the Department of Justice – for treason!
And now the latest chapter in blood-letting is the decapitation of the Red Army. More than all the other Moscow trials put together, this act has had the widest repercussions in world opinion. “Is the Red Army as strong as we thought it was?” the German general staff is asking itself. Among the enemies and allies of Russia, a revision of opinion is in process which may have the profoundest effects in world politics, and which cannot but affect the question of war and peace in the world arena.
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On May 22, 1937 Marshal Tukhachevsky was suddenly removed from his post as Vice-Commissar of Defense and transferred to a minor post in the provinces. Within the next few days the commanders of the military districts and other prominent generals were likewise transferred. These measures boded nothing good. It was evident that the ruling tops had come into serious conflict with the officers’ corps.
Moved by the interests of Soviet defense, the commanders of the districts and the responsible generals, might have intervened in Tukhachevsky’s behalf. Did they do so? In all probability the whirl of transfers and arrests in the month of May and during the first days of June can be explained only by panic in the Kremlin. On June 1, Gamarnik either shot himself or was shot. The commanders of the military districts no sooner arrived at their new posts than they were placed under arrest and turned over to the court. On June 9, the following were arrested: Tukhachevsky, who had just been appointed to Samara; Yakir, who had just been transferred to Leningrad; Uborevich, commander of the White Russian Military district; Kork, head of the Military Academy; Putna, former military attaché at Tokyo and London; Primakov, a cavalry general; Feldman, chief of the personnel section of the General Staff; Eideman, head of the Ossoaviakhim. Two days later, all eight were sentenced to death and on the following day shot.
