RUSSIAN MARSHAL

Otago Daily Times, Issue 25805, 28 March 1945, Page 6

RUSSIAN MARSHAL

DEATH OF SHAPOSHNIKOV FORMER CHIEF OF GENERAL STAFF (Rec. 7 p.m.) LONDON, Mar. 27. The death is announced of Marshal Shaposhnikov, head of the Soviet Military Academy and formerly chief of the Russian General Staff. He was 63 years of age. Very little has been said or written in Russia about the personality of Marshal Shaposhnikov, who as Chief of the General Staff undoubtedly laid the plans for the early Russian offensives The Russians do not like bringing their commanders into the limelight. They consider, says the Observer, that curiosity about the personal aspects of life is the worst of manners, and a commander’s personality is as much a military secret as would be the model of a newly-invented weapon, Marshal

Shaposhnikov’s role was more than a military secret, it was an enigma. Nothing in his youth seemed to point to the splendid career he was to make in revolutionary Russia.

He was born in a small town in the Urals in 1882. His father was a modest and loyal civil servant. The future Chief of Staff of the Red Army grew up in the quiet atmosphere of a provincial home, where there was no room for strong politipal passions and ambitions.

In 1910 Boris Shaposhnikov graduated from the Military Academy. He was promoted major, and in 1917, at the age of 35, he became colonel. What distinguished him at that time from many Czarist officers was his very humane attitude towards his soldiers. There was no brutality in his regiment. Soon he had his reward. When, amid the storm of the revolution, the moujiks started to take revenge on their officers, when the old discipline broke down and the soldiers started to elect their own commanders, Colonel Shaposhnikov was elected by the council of the Caucasian Rifle Division to be commander of the division. He stood by the new regime right from the beginning. There were no political motives in his mind; he was led by purely patriotic sentiments. The Red Army was desperately short of trained military commanders. In May, 1918, Shaposhnikov reported to the new G.H.Q. He was received there with enthusiasm by a group of civilian politicians and Marxist propagandists, confronted with the appalling task of setting up a new army on the ruins of the old one. They tried “ to build the new house with the old bricks.” Every professional officer willing to help was welcome. But very few old bricks were available; and Shaposhnikov’s knowledge and skill in organisation were found invaluable at that stage. He was the professional midwife at the birth of the Red Army. The officers who served under the White generals hated and abused him for this, but two years later General Erusilov himself, the former Czarist commander-in-chief, offered his services to the Red Army, and this must have been the brightest moment in Shaposhnikov’s career. In 1921 Shaposhnikov was awarded the Order of the Red Banner. He was then assistant to the Chief of Staff. His main task was to educate a new generation of officers, and his pupils were workers and peasants distinguished in the civil war.

The task was hard. Shaposhnikov wrote several books on the arts of war. His “ Cavalry ” and " The Brains of the Army” .have served as manuals. He retained the appearance and outlook of the grand seigneur. In his outward bearing he remained the old Russian officer. His neat and elegent uniform singled him out from a c#owd of leather jackets, that typical Red Army dress in the early twenties. His manners remained almost pedantically reserved. But in his feelings and sentiments he became one with the new generation of Russia’s heroic warriors. He became the living link between the past and the present. Between the two wars he twice held the post of G.O.C. the Leningrad garr rison; first in 1925, when Trotsky was removed from the Red Army, and later in 1935-37 during the period of the purges. Three times he was appointed Chief of Staff, in 1928, in 1937, and in 1941. Meantime, he was in command of the Volga military district. Like some of the best commanders, he tasted failure and disappointment. In 1939-40, during the first Russo-Finnish war, he was in command of the Leningrad district. In September. 1941, he was Deputy Commissar of Defence and member of the Central Executive Committee of the Party, and in 1942 he was awarded the Order of Lenin. He was called to the post of Chief of the General Staff at a time when Russia’s military position looked almost irretrievable. He, however, possessed the most essential qualities needed to retrieve it. It was a good portent that at a time when Hitler had dismissed so many of his educated and brilliant generals, and preferred to rely on his famous intuition, the Red Army had as its Chief of Staff a man who possessed an enormous military knowledge and a limitless strategical patience.