Executive Summary Russia’s General Staff has long-established interests in the analysis of developments in the means and methods of military conflict. In the early Soviet era, military theory, far from being purely academic, proved decisive in shaping the successful defense and survival of the Soviet Union from the onslaught of the invading Nazi German Wehrmacht. In latter decades, several Soviet …
Brief recollections of World War II–by the son of a Soviet military leader and Left Oppositionist murdered by Stalin: Part 1
These recollections about the Nazi-Soviet war of 1941–45 were written by Yuri Primakov, who experienced the war as a teenager, and is now 94 years old. Yuri Primakov was born in 1927 and lives in Moscow. He was born into a revolutionary family. His mother, Maria Dovzhik, fought in the civil war but left the Bolshevik Party in 1922. His father, Vitaly Primakov, joined the Bolshevik in 1914. At age 19 he became a member of the Military Revolutionary Committee, which, under the leadership of Leon Trotsky, organized the seizure of power in October 1917. He later became a leading commander in the Red Army during the civil war and a member of the Left Opposition. In 1937, Vitaly Primakov, along with virtually the entire leadership of the Red Army, was arrested and executed. The mass murder of Red Army leaders was part of the Great Terror, in which almost a milli