Abstract
Victory over Germany and Japan brought Stalin various personal rewards, apart from the vast increase in the power of the Soviet Union. There was a triumphal parade on Red Square, the planning of which he personally initiated, instructing Zhukov to appear on horseback in the interests of tradition. There were more medals to add to his substantial collection: the Order of Victory, another Hero of the Soviet Union with the Order of Lenin and a Gold Star. Although he was to be embalmed wearing numerous medals, Stalin while alive customarily displayed only a single Hero of the Soviet Union award. The most elevated of all his new honours was a specially created military rank, ‘generalissimus’ — ‘the superlative general’. This dignity was proposed by his commanders at a banquet following the victory parade, with what inspiration one cannot say. At least he exercised some restraint in the design of the uniform of the new rank. Marshal Shtemenko relates that he once called on Stalin’s office and found in the waiting-room the commander of the intendancy of the Red Army, wearing an archaic costume in the style of Kutuzov, with a high collar and gold stripes on the trousers. This was somebody’s proposed design for Generalissimus Stalin, who, on seeing it, asked, ‘Who got you dressed up like that?’ On learning what was going on, he sensibly decided to stick to the existing uniform of a marshal, simply adding a new shoulder insignia.1
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G. K. Zhukov, The Memoirs of Marhsal Zhukov (New York, 1971) 652. P, 28 June 1945;
S. M. Shtemenko, General’nyi shtab v gody voiny (Moscow, 1973 ) II, 499 – 500.
S. Volkov (ed.), Testimony. The Memoirs of Dmitri Shostakovich (New York, 1979) 256–64.
Zhurnal Moskovskoi Patriarkhii, 12 September 1943; G. Yakunin, ‘Moskovskaia Patriarkhiia i “kult lichnosti” Stalina’, Russkoe vozrozhdenie, n. 2 (1978) 110–14; S, XVI, 93–6. The balloon-born image was repeated on Stalin’s seventieth birthday (Ogonek,1949, no. 52).
KR, 289, 296–301; M. Djilas, Conversations with Stalin (New York, 1962) 151, 158, 161;
S. Allilueva, Only One Year (New York, 1969) 384–6;
E. Hoxha, With Stalin (Toronto, 1980) 147; Shtemenko (1973) 39–40;
T. Toranska, Oni (London, 1985) 254–5.
S. Allilueva, Twenty Letters to a Friend (New York, 1967) 101, 159–63; 169, 185, 211; Allilueva (1969) 370; Zhukov (1971) 635–6. Yakov did not attend the Frunze Academy, as Svetlana recalls (1967, 157), but the Dzerzhinsky Artillery Academy, which issued him a diploma on display in the museum in Gori.
Allilueva (1967) 123, 133, 165, 167–8, 185, 212–15; L. Shatunovskaia, Zhizn’ v Kremle (New York, 1982) 250;
D. Bialer, Stalin and His Generals (New York, 1966) 455.
S. Allilueva, The Faraway Music (New Delhi, 1984) 7, 21; Allilueva (1967) 134, 154–5; Allilueva (1969) 369, 384; Djilas (1962) 110.
Zhukov (1971) 635; N. S. Patolichev, Measures of Maturity (Oxford, 1983) 284; Bialer (1966) 563; Allilueva, (1967) 188; FRUS (1949) V, 653;
W. A. Harriman and E. Abel, Special Envoy to Churchill and Stalin (New York, 1975 ) 511 – 16.
R. A. Medvedev, On Stalin and Stalinism (Oxford, 1979) 155, reflects the rumours of Stalin’s illness in reporting that he was so ill in 1949 that he could not say a word at the ceremony in honour of his birthday. But the foreign Communists who saw him at just this time found him fit enough and talking. See Hoxha (1980) 127–61, and Wu Xiuquan, unpublished translation of his memoir, which appeared in Chinese in Shijie zhishi, no. 16 (1983).
Harriman (1975) 511–16; Hoxha (1980) 128; P, 15 October 1948; KR, 299; A. S. Yakovlev, Tsel’zhizni (1966) 448–50; Allileuva (1967) 190.
Khrushchev specifically attributed to Stalin responsibility for the deportations (KR, 190). In general, A. M. Nekrich, The Punished Peoples (New York, 1978).
A. Werth, Russia. The Postwar Years (London, 1971) 35;
T. Dunmore, Soviet Politics, 1945–1953 (London, 1984) 22–3, 28 – 9;
T. H. Rigby, Communist Party Membership in the U.S.S.R. 1917–1967 ( Princeton, NJ, 1968 ) 52.
J. A. Armstrong, The Politics of Totalitarianism (New York, 1961 ) 173 – 87.
L. I. Brezhnev, Trilogy. The Little Land. Rebirth. The Virgin Lands (New York, 1978 ) 159 – 61;
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KR, 228–44; Zverev (1973) 244; KPSS, VI, 173–9; S. Talbott (ed.) Khrushchev Remembers. The Last Testament (Boston, 1974) 112–14.
J. Stalin, Marxism and Linguistics (New York, 1951). His editing of poetic translations from the Georgian is documented in the museum in Gori. On Albanian, Hoxha, (1980) 80–4, 120 – 1;
on the Indian languages, K. P. S. Menon, The Flying Troika (London, 1963) 27 – 8.
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D. Joraysky, The Lysenko Affair (Cambridge, Mass., 1970 ) 39–54, 295 – 307.
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L. R. Graham, Science and Philosophy in the Soviet Union (New York, 1972 ) 443 – 50.
A. A. Medvedev (1971) 109 – 35;A. N. Studitsky, ‘Fly-lovers and Man-haters’, Journal of Heredity, no. 11 (1949) 312 – 14.
M. D. Shulman, Stalin’s Foreign Policy Reappraised (Cambridge, Mass., 1963) 80–103, 199–237; P, 21 December 1939.
S, XVI, 56, 183–5; Djilas (1962) 153; J. Erickson, The Road to Berlin. Vol. II, Stalin’s War with Germany (Boulder, Col., 1983) 79–80; Zhukov (1971) 675;
S. M. Shtemenko, The Soviet General Staff at War, 1941–1945 (Moscow, 1970) 347–8, says that Stalin did not realize that an entirely new weapon was involved. His evidence for this is that the General Staff received no new instructions in this connection. But this discounts the probability that Stalin’s agents had kept him abreast of the Manhattan project. He presumably addressed his exhortation to Kurchatov through Molotov, as a member of the State Committee of Defence, which had control of the atomic project, rather than through military, whom Stalin did not entrust with the matter.
A. Eden, The Reckoning. The Memoirs of Anthony Eden (Boston, 1965) 335; FRUS (Tehran), 600; FRUS (Yalta), 611–16; S, XV, 198. The Soviet delegation to a dismemberment commission established at Yalta lost interest in this matter as early as March 1945 [J. K. Snowden, The German Question, 1945–1973 (London, 1975) 69].
V. M. Molotov, Voprosy vneshnei politiki (Moscow, 1948) 577–84. Granted, the size of military force that the Soviet Union, America, Britain and France would be permitted to retain in Germany in connection with a proposed Control Commission was not specified, so perhaps Stalin did not intend to take much chance on the question of a Soviet military presence in Germany. See FRUS (1947) II, 279.
H. G. Skilling, ‘“People’s Democracies” in Soviet Theory’, Soviet Studies, no. 1 (1951) 16–33; no. 2 (1951) 131 – 49.
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R. H. McNeal (ed.), International Relations among Communists ( Englewood Cliffs, NJ, 1967 ) 51 – 3.
Hoxha (1980) 62, 65, 76–7, 93, 163–200; Djilas (1962) 143, 154, 172–9, 181–2; 172–9, 181–2; V. Dedijer, The Battle Stalin Lost (New York, 1971) 31–3, 188; Kardelj (1982) 103 – 8, 187.
Wu Xiuquan (1983); R. S. Simmons, The Strained Alliance (New York, 1975) 59.
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© 1988 Robert H. McNeal
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McNeal, R.H. (1988). Generalissimus. In: Stalin. St Antony’s. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-07461-7_13
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