Stavka

Stavka. From June 1941, the Soviet armed forces did not have an explicitly designated commander-in chief. The function was assumed to be vested in the People's Commissar (minister) of Defence, Marshal Timoshenko, who, upon the outbreak of a general war, would organize a stavka (general headquarters) under himself. However, Stalin alone possessed the authority to make the kind of decisions necessitated by the German invasion (see BARBAROSSA), and he was not disposed to delegate it. On 19 July 1941, after an attempt to run a stavka in which Timoshenko was chairman and he a member, Stalin, having also recovered somewhat from the first shock of the war, took over as chairman and defence commissar.

In early August, when the situation appeared to be stabilizing, Stalin named himself Supreme Commander-in-Chief, formed the Stavka of the Supreme Commander and charged it with directing military operations in accordance with strategic requirements determined by the State Defence Committee, which he also headed. He and Marshal Shaposhnikov, chief of the general staff, which was the Stavka's planning and executive agency, were the only members with regularized functions in a body that was otherwise consultative. Molotov and Admiral N. G. Kuznetsov represented their commissariats, foreign and naval affairs respectively. Marshals Timoshenko, Voroshilov and Budenny, and General Zhukov served as Stalin thought they could be best used at a given time. Zhukov, particularly, and Timoshenko, quickly proved effective at high-level field command. Voroshilov and Budenny failed about as quickly, but Stalin kept them on for personal and political reasons. The Stavka only met on Stalin's call, which as time passed came more and more infrequently, and the greater part of the decisions attributed to it were Stalin's alone.

During the winter offensive of 1941–2, when he believed victory was in sight, Stalin regarded the Stavka as no more than the means of ensuring total compliance with his orders. The following summer's defeats forced him to revise his command style; and in August 1942, he made Zhukov first deputy C-in-C and first deputy defence commissar, which placed him a clear second in the command channel and gave him access to the general staff apparatus. Together with its chief (since June 1942), General Vasilevsky, Zhukov organized the Stalingrad counter-offensive and solved a major Soviet command problem which was an inability to perform sophisticated large-scale manoeuvres, such as encirclements. Soviet fronts (army groups) possessed only about a third the span of control of German army groups, and their performance was uneven. At Stalingrad, as Stavka representatives, Zhukov and Vasilevsky personally co-ordinated three fronts in the preparation and the battle, and they brought in—also as Stavka representatives—the army branch chiefs for air, armour, and artillery to supervise their contingents. The result was a masterly encirclement that, with Hitler's help, culminated in a shattering German defeat.

In early 1943, the Red Army was as close to having a professional C-in-C as it ever would be. Zhukov appears to have had the deciding voice in military operations. But Stalin's self-confidence was reviving as well. Very likely because they were the most proficient but also, no doubt, to protect his own position, Stalin kept Zhukov and Vasilevsky in the field co-ordinating fronts from June 1943 to April 1944 and from June to October 1944. As successes multiplied, he increasingly asserted his prerogatives.

In October 1944, when preparations for the final offensives began, he gave Zhukov command of First Belorussian front and recalled Vasilevsky to Moscow to plan a campaign against the Japanese Kwantung Army (see Japanese–Soviet campaigns). He told Zhukov that although two fronts besides his would be involved in the drive to Berlin, his services as co-ordinator would not be needed because everything could be handled from Moscow.

On 17 and 18 February 1945, Stalin sent Vasilevsky to take command of Third Belorussian front in east Prussia and reorganized the Stavka. General A. I. Antonov, who had substituted for Vasilevsky during his absences, became chief of the general staff and a member. N. A. Bulganin (1895–1975), a political commissar with the assimilated rank of general, became a member. Kuznetsov represented the navy. Zhukov and Vasilevsky were retained in the anomalous position of members functioning at a subordinate command level. Vasilevsky's memoirs indicate that he had not previously known he was a member, which may disclose much about the Stavka's collegial status. The Stavka terminated before the war against Japan, in which Vasilevsky, as C-in-C, Far East, served directly under Generalissimo of the Soviet Union Stalin. See also USSR 6(a).

Earl Ziemke