The Chinese army later took full control of the Trans-Siberian Railway, and their supply problems were largely resolved. In this case, the Soviet troops still have a chance to withdraw, but why not go? Besides, the masses had already been transferred some time ago, and only these troops with good mobility were left, wouldn't it be better to transfer at this time? In this way, they could also wait for an opportunity to attack the weak rear flank of the Chinese army's forward troops.

And when the defensive and counter-offensive operations were at their most intense, Rokossovsky did not have time to dwell on these issues. Now, as he crouched on the back of a Soviet soldier, the doubts crept into his head again.

Rokossovsky has not yet been able to fully understand Comrade Stalin's intentions, but he thinks that Stalin's strategic intentions are by no means simply to delay the pace of the Chinese army's offensive. Because with several corps, a number of reserve divisions, and more than 100,000 reserve troops, the National Defense Committee has placed a total of nearly 800,000 troops in such a dead land, and there should be a deeper strategic attempt to conduct such a campaign. He guessed that now half of the Soviet army should still have complete combat effectiveness, especially the main force, and there should be many troops that have not been put into battle!

Thinking of this, Rokossovsky felt confident again.

At this time, Rokossovsky, who was still on the run, did not know that he and the great leader, whom he and hundreds of millions of Soviet soldiers and civilians admired and admired, were on the verge of spiritual collapse.

In these days, Stalin did not take strong measures, steps and actions in order to firmly grasp the situation. He was caught up in one very unfavorable event after another. He, like many others, was swept up in this rapids and couldn't help himself. He couldn't find a point of support anyway in order to stand up and cheer up...... There is a world of difference between a human god who was innocent before the war, and now a "leader" who has seen all his plans, ideas, and strategic estimates collapse in just a month or two...... This is something that even a man with such strong willpower as Stalin could not bear. He seems to have been waiting for his cronies, military leaders, and people to vent their grievances on him, because he was the main culprit for all sorts of mistakes, for losing this "gamble" with China, and for the unprecedented weakening of military cadres by means of terror...... But the Soviet people stood tall in a moment of mortal danger, and they did not settle accounts with their leaders. The "grandeur" of the Soviet people was so noble that at this tragic moment they did not set their sights on finding the culprits who caused this situation. The wisdom of the people's experience demands that this matter be left to history. The famous Russian philosopher Nik? Profound? Lorsky wrote: "The goodness of the Russian people, in all his strata...... are all manifested as not holding grudges. ”

The culmination of Stalin's psychological shock was his reaction to the news of the fall of Sverdlovsk. After reading the morning war report of the General Staff, Stalin went to his dacha, and he did not come to the Kremlin for almost the whole day, because it was difficult for Stalin to accept the fact that only two months after the start of the war, this important town had fallen under the enemy's iron heel. Molotov and Beria went to him. There is no information on what the "Holy Trinity" says.

The people were expecting Stalin's speech. As always, they trust him and associate hope with him. It is quite possible that it was this that helped Stalin to get out of the psychological concussion. It was not until 3 July that the chairman of the National Defense Committee decided to make a radio address to the nation. The war has only just begun. Many people have understood that the war will be very difficult and long. Stalin repeatedly revised his speeches. For him, the greatest difficulty was to find the words and arguments to explain to the people what had happened: the defeat, the invasion, the bankruptcy of the peace treaty. In the margins of the speeches there was a pencil note from Stalin: "Why? "The enemy will be crushed", "What should be done?" ”。 It looks like an outline for the country's number one man to deliver a program speech. In his speech, Stalin stated the basic points of the June 29 resolution of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the United States and the Council of People's Commissars of the USSR.

In his speech, Stalin spent a lot of time explaining, in fact, justifying himself why the Chinese army was able to encroach on large swathes of Soviet territory. In the end, it all boiled down to one sentence: "The problem is that China is the country that started the war, its army has been fully mobilized, and more than 300 divisions that China used to deal with the USSR have already marched to the borders of the USSR and are in a state of full readiness, just waiting for a signal to move, while the Soviet army needs to mobilize and move towards the national border." "Stalin's statement that the enemy's elite divisions had been routed was a clear lie, and he also lied that the main reason for the defeat was a sudden Chinese offensive...... It is only natural that Stalin did not mention the humiliating "friendship and border" treaties and, above all, the many fatal mistakes he himself made when talking about the Sino-Soviet treaty. When Stalin said that "the whole of our work should be reformed according to the track of wartime," his tone was much firmer. For the first time, he called this war the "Great Patriotic War," called for "the establishment of guerrilla units," "a merciless struggle against all elements who disturb the rear, deserters, panicked elements, and rumor-mongers," and for the first time openly expressed the hope that the efforts of the peoples of Europe and the Americas would be united in the struggle against "the barbaric Chinese and their brutal army." At the end of his speech, the Chairman of the National Defence Committee announced that "the Defence Committee has begun its work, which calls on the people of the whole country to rally around the party of Lenin and Stalin......"

Stalin was accustomed to himself speaking of "Lenin and Stalin's party", and the people were accustomed to it. Because of the great trust of the Soviet people in Stalin, his speech played an important mobilizing role, as if it were a simple and clear answer to the various questions that the people were distressed about. Only a few people were able to see more deeply at the time and see that the tragedy of the early years of the war was the result of Stalin's dictatorship. The untold sacrifices are the result of repeated mistakes by "consistently right people". The most strange thing is that Stalin made many mistakes and serious crimes, but because of the system he created, these mistakes and crimes were strangely turned into savior feats in people's minds. One of the main culprits of the tragedy of the early days of the war, to be precise, the culprit, actually continues to embody the hopes of the people. This can be said to be faith at work. The Soviet people were so bold that they managed to survive the tragedy of the first weeks of the war and not collapse. Yet this has come at the cost of millions of lives. Stalin's "greatness" has always been based on victims, on the basis of many, many victims, on countless victims.

Stalin concentrated power, party power, and military power in his own hands. The base camp of the Supreme High Command headed by Stalin was formed. From 30 June, he headed the National Defense Committee and concurrently served as People's Commissar for National Defense. At the beginning of July, Stalin's state of loss of soul began to wane, although until then he had maintained a semblance of composure, so that not everyone could perceive his panic and depression. The uplift of his willpower began to manifest itself in active intervention in all aspects of the life of the country in which the war to the death was being waged. Stalin worked 16 to 18 hours a day, and he became emaciated, more blunt, paranoid, and often even fierce. Every day, dozens of military, political, ideological and economic documents are reported to him, which, after he has signed, become orders, instructions, decisions and resolutions. It should be said that there are advantages and disadvantages to concentrating political, state, and military power in the hands of one person. On the one hand, in extraordinary circumstances, the concentration of power makes it possible to concentrate the forces of the whole country to the maximum extent possible to solve the main tasks. On the other hand, the absolute monopoly of power has greatly weakened the readability, initiative and creativity of leaders at all levels. No major decisions, actions and steps can be taken without the approval of the number one person.

In fact, there were only two or three people working directly with Stalin in the base camp. But their job is only to fulfill the commissions of the Supreme Commander-in-Chief. In the wartime, apart from Stalin, the only members of the Politburo who played a prominent role were Voznesensky, Danov and Khrushchev. Voznesensky actively dealt with the economic problems of the Soviet Union. Danov and Khrushchev served as members of the Military Committee of the armies of different directions and fronts, and they were active implementers of Stalin's will. As for Voroshilov, after several failed defensive battles, he lost Stalin's trust in him "in terms of operations". Kalinin legitimized the decision-making of the "leader" with the corresponding order, and at the same time took part in propaganda work. Mikoyan and Kaganovich spent a lot of time dealing with transport-economic matters and food issues, and the two of them were practically not involved in any activity as members of the Military Council of the Front. Malenkov was actually the one who carried out the tasks entrusted to him by Stalin within the organs of the Central Committee. He had been to the front several times to complete the tasks assigned by the Supreme Commander-in-Chief, but since he was completely unfamiliar with military affairs, he left no trace. Molotov has always been the deputy chairman of the National Defense Committee, and he is mainly responsible for international issues. Beria was in charge of the "cleansing" of the Russian rear, the Chinese prisoner of war camps, the concentration camps of Soviet soldiers who had been captured or surrounded, and the "prison" industry that served the war effort. He was sent by Stalin and twice came to the North Caucasus Front. Andreyev was in charge of agriculture and front-line supplies. With its absolute monopoly of power, Stalin seemed to have excluded the Central Committee from party life during the war years, but in the front and in the rear, the grassroots party organizations played a huge role. The work of the Central Committee is embodied by its organs. Almost no plenums of the Central Committee were held during the war. Although some members of the Central Committee had been summoned to Moscow and had to wait for two days for a plenum of the Central Committee, Stalin and Malenkov could not spare time. The plenary session did not take place. Stalin did not attach importance to distinguishing between the duties of the highest organs of the party, the state and the army. And it doesn't make much sense either: anyway, it is he alone who heads all these bodies - the secretary of the Central Committee, the chairman of the Council of People's Commissars, the Supreme Commander-in-Chief, the chairman of the State Defense Committee, the chairman of the base camp, the People's Commissar of Defense. He also signed documents under different names: the Central Committee, the Base Camp, the National Defense Committee or the People's Commissariat of Defense.

There may not be any doubt that in times of war it is necessary to concentrate state, political and military power. However, it can be said unequivocally that this concentration of power should first of all be within certain limits in the life of the party, and should not make the people around them become characters who play tricks and obey orders. Stalin "took everything" on himself. So it has to be said that the scale and responsibility of the work he shoulders is beyond the capacity of one person. If economic, political, and diplomatic issues are largely the responsibility of the Politburo members and the members of the National Defense Committee, then the military and military-political problems are largely resolved by him, the Supreme Commander, and this has led to many mistakes. Fortunately, among the members of the General Staff and the top military leadership, a large number of outstanding and outstanding military leaders soon came to the fore. But it cannot be said again that the huge gap in the army cadres that had been created on the eve of the war by Stalin's fault was felt for a long time, especially in the links of the front, group armies, armies and divisions.

Having become the commander-in-chief of the armed forces, Stalin tried with all his might to figure out: what was the situation at the front? Where is the current front? What awaits him tomorrow? Where exactly can the [***] team be stopped? How can the huge losses of personnel and equipment be made up for as quickly as possible? Stalin listened for a long time to the statements of Zhukov, Vatutin, Vasilevsky and others in the General Staff, and stood there silently looking at the map spread out on his large table. He was purely an office leader, and when he looked at the map and read the report, it was difficult to grasp, hear, and feel the sharp beating pulse of the bloody army, the roar of artillery on the battlefield, the rolling of the tracks of the Chinese tanks, the crackling of urban fires, the snorting of dying soldiers...... and the shadow of the "sabre-like" civil war was somehow suddenly pushed to the distant past. It was a completely different war.

By the time of the Battle of Moscow, many of Stalin's decisions had been made on the spur of the moment, superficially, contradictory, and layman. He often provided some inexplicable things to the people around him and various commands. After receiving reports of another defeat or retreat of his troops, Stalin sometimes dictated not combat orders, but "punitive" orders. Even if these orders were signed by Zhukov, Vasilevsky, Shaposhnikov, Vatutin, it is possible to unmistakably identify whose authors these orders came from. For example, on June 30, when it became known that the troops of the Northeast Front had again failed to gain a foothold on a favorable defensive line, and the report of the command of the Front gave the pretext that there were sabotage group activities in the rear, Stalin immediately reacted in this way:

"The base camp of the presidential command and the National Defense Council express absolute dissatisfaction with the work of the command and command of the Northwestern Front."

"The first is that the commanders who do not carry out your orders, abandon their positions like traitors, and withdraw from the defensive areas without receiving orders have not been punished. Such a liberal attitude towards cowards will not be effective in your defense. ”

"Your annihilation detachments have so far been inactive, and the results of their work have not been seen, and the units of the Northeast Front have been retreating due to the inaction of the commanders of divisions, corps, group armies, and front armies. The time has come to put an end to this shameful practice...... The commander and members of the Military Council, the prosecutor and the chief of the third division should immediately go to the front troops and deal with cowards and traitors on the spot......"

Before the war, the USSR did not prepare a work station with specialized equipment for the highest strategic body for commanding the troops, the base camp. Neither in the Kremlin nor in Stalin's dacha had a command post that could withstand air strikes by Chinese aircraft, although both Timoshenko and Zhukov insisted on the construction of such a command post. Therefore, in the first months of the war, Stalin often went to the dacha on Kirov Street, and in the building adjacent to this dacha there were several bureaus of the General Staff. The station "Kirov" of the underground railway was cut off from the transport network and turned into a good bomb shelter. It was also the same as Stalin's office in the Kremlin, where there was always a map of operations on the table, indicating the situation on each front. Later, Stalin ordered the construction of a small bomb shelter in the villa in the suburbs, and equipped it with a communication station, through which Stalin could communicate with the various armies.

Stalin looked at the operational map prepared by the General Staff, and he clearly saw the main directions in which the enemy was rapidly launching the offensive: the Moscow direction and the Stalingrad direction. On 10 July, at Stalin's suggestion, the base camp made a decision to set up a northeastern command with Voroshilov as commander and Danov as a member of the Military Council, an Eastern Command with Timoshenko as commander and Bulganin as a member of the Military Council, and a southeastern command with Budyonny as commander and Khrushchev as a member of the Military Council. But the various commands failed to function in earnest. The main reason, again, lies in Stalin: the Supreme Commander-in-Chief established these strategic command structures without giving them the powers they deserve. Orders are sent directly to the troops beyond them, and they do not pay attention to the activities of the headquarters and staffs. Moreover, the establishment of these command organs was not planned in advance, so there was a lack of corresponding cadres and a minimum of equipment support.

(To be continued)