Timoshenko for Voroshilov

Joseph Stalin, as well as a lot of other people, learned much from the way the Red Army performed in Finland. Last week the Dictator, slow, methodical and unforgetting, began to apply his knowledge. Paramount lesson of the Finnish campaign was that the Communist system of attaching to each Red Army officer a political commissar with overriding authority is unpractical. It implies that the officer is not fully trustworthy, undermines his authority with the troops, paralyzes quick decision and active leadership in the field. At the Dictator's order last week Red Star, newsorgan of the Red Army, announced that Soviet officers have now been given "full power and responsibility," denounced the "dilettantism" and "ossified dogma" of the commissar system.

The Dictator also revived in the Red Army & Navy the ranks of "general" and "admiral,' titles Bolsheviks have associated previously with Tsarist times. "The reform," said Pravda, "although belated, constitutes a link in the chain of measures strengthening discipline of the armed forces. . . . The titles of general and admiral reflect clearly that the [Army & Navy] commanders have full authority. . . . The results of the Finnish and Far Eastern campaigns established their authority among the Red Army and the masses of the Soviet people."

"Klim" Upstairs. No less significant than its reform in principle was the Red Army's simultaneous shift in personnel. Defense Commissar Marshal Kliment ("Klim") Voroshilov, the popular, jolly and easygoing warlord who for 15 years has cavorted about the Red Square every May Day on a glossy charger set off by a naming red saddlecloth with gold trimmings, was kicked upstairs to the job of Vice Premier and Chairman of the Defense Committee.

The Committee theoretically controls the Army, Navy and Air Force, so that ostensibly Klim was promoted, but in Moscow few doubted the Dictator was stripping the Marshal of all real power. Two most accepted reasons: 1) the original Red Army fiasco in the Finnish campaign was the fault of either the Dictator or of his Defense Commissar, and ipso facto in Russia it was not Joseph Stalin's fault; 2) Klim is a believer in the traditional Russian defensive strategy, which would be a handicap if & when the U. S. S. R. continues aggressions. His successor is not.

Timoshenko. In naming the new Defense Commissar, Dictator Stalin also let it be known for the first time who brought to its victorious conclusion the Finnish campaign. Both were the same man, Marshal Semion Timoshenko. The Marshal is a Bolshevik so comparatively obscure that the latest edition of the Soviet Encyclopedia gives him not a line.

The new Defense Commissar was born in 1895 of peasant stock in Bessarabia (now Rumanian), worked as farm laborer for a Russian noble, in 1915 was drafted into the Imperial Army. Private Semion

Timoshenko fought on the Eastern Front until the Revolution of 1917, then joined the Red Army and (by a process since abolished) was elected an officer. After the Whites whipped his Red unit in the Caucasus, Comrade Timoshenko escaped to Tsaritsyn, then defended by Red Army forces under Stalin and Voroshilov, with whom he became fast friends. They gave him command of a cavalry brigade and in 1920, while attacking Baron Wrangel's forces at Perekop in the Crimea, Timoshenko was severely wounded and his brigade was cut to pieces by the Whites.

Purge Promotions. Some years later virtually illiterate Cavalryman Timoshenko learned his three Rs and the art of war at the Frunze School, especially founded for uneducated Bolsheviks like himself who had done their best in the Red Army. After graduating, Timoshenko found the road of Red Army promotion slow, but it was speeded when Stalin began having officers he mistrusted shot. Into the shoes of "purged" Commander Dubo-voy of the Military District of Kharkov in 1937 stepped Commander Timoshenko.

Next year he was made Commander of the Special Military District of Kiev. This meant that after the German Army smashed Poland fortunate Commander Timoshenko was right next door and with flying colors led Red Army forces to scoop up Russia's share of the spoils.

When the Red Army began to misfire in Finland, the Dictator summoned Semion Timoshenko to Leningrad, placed him in command of the operations which ultimately broke the Mannerheim Line.

The plan was worked out by Red Army Chief of Staff Boris Shaposhnikov. The Red Army artillery which pounded the Mannerheim Line to bits was in charge of Inspector General Grigory Kulik, cited during the Stalin purge of the Red Army for having "helped to reveal the high treason of two successive chiefs." In reward for their Finnish triumphs, last week Timoshenko, Shaposhnikov and Kulik were made Marshals.

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