Ahhh.....the good old days of Stalin’s purges. I’ve read a few biographies of Stalin as well as some histories of “The Terror.”
An unbelievable time.
The 2:00 a.m. knock on the apartment door. The husband vanishes, the family moves out in silence the next afternoon....
Military officers called for a mass meeting. Their side arms are taken at the door by the NKVD troops. From the group, names of “traitors” are read out and they are taken away. Some officers, fearing the worst, commit suicide before entering the room.
Stalin’s purged his officer corps of some very competent leaders (and admittedly, some hacks). The remainder were paralyzed by fear. They would not exercise ANY initiative and would follow orders to the letter, no matter how ridiculous (even that would not save them when the war came). So these men were advanced to the vacant posts above them.
At the same time, Stalin expanded the Red Army from a standing force of 1.5 million to about 5 million men. Now the new formations need officers, so the cowed, inexperienced officers who survived the purge are advanced two or three ranks to staff the new horde. They had no idea what they were doing in their jobs, and any failure meant a death sentence.
Is it any wonder the Red Army was wiped out in the field in a matter weeks during the German onslaught in 1941?
The Red Army was caught with their pants down, all right.
The weird thing about this article is that, other than the headline there is no mention of a purge of the sort you describe. It is really about the beginning of an incident at the Siberia-Manchukuo border where Soviet and Japanese army types started shooting at each other.