The leader of any political party who regards normal intra-party opinions and controversies as hostile and destroys them by treating the enemy will eventually cause irreparable harm and unforgivable crimes to the country, to the nation, and to the party itself. Pen ~ fun ~ pavilion www.biquge.info

It all seemed to have started with the assassination of Stalin, and so far there is no convincing truth, but it was the direct trigger for the Great Purge. The current credible conservative figure for the Great Purge of 1937-1940 was that no less than 1.57 million people were sentenced, about 690,000 were executed, about 700,000 were imprisoned in labor camps, and an unknown number died in prisons and labor camps.

(Disclosed archival information indicates that in 1940 the Gulag kept information on a total of 8 million people, and by 1953 there were no less than 10 million.) This means that about 10 million people were sent to the Gulag Archipelago during the entire Stalin era, and this is just the information of a prison. ）

After Marshal Tukhachevsky had already been shot dead by Stalin, he stopped for a while, and by 1940 Stalin had two more Soviet marshals arrested - Yegorov and the commander of the Red Banner Far Eastern Special Army Blyukher.

The highly decorated Red Marshal Yegorov was an outstanding commander who had experienced a hundred battles and performed many miraculous feats, a heroic revolutionary soldier, and a defender of Moscow.

In the autumn of 1919, when Denikin's troops advanced on Tula, the gateway to Moscow, Yegorov was appointed commander of the Southern Front and led the campaign to crush Denikin, thereby saving the young Soviet Republic.

In 1920, at the most difficult stage of the war, he was an indefatigable assistant to Stalin's side and the first chief of the General Staff of the Red Army. He was a man of great integrity and decency. From the end of the civil war until 1937, Yegorov successively held important military leadership positions such as commander of the Kiev and Petrograd Military Districts, chief of the General Staff of the Red Army, first deputy People's Commissar of Defense, and in 1934 he was elected a member of the Central Committee of the CPSU.

During his tenure, he made important contributions to the reorganization and refitting of the Red Army and the formation of powerful armored units, and he dedicated his life to the security of the army, the people, and the Soviet Motherland.

Later generations believed that with his outstanding talent and commanding art, he was enough to rank among such outstanding commanders as Frunze, Tukhachevsky, and even Zhukov.

Egorov and Stalin referred to each other as "you" (in the Russian language, the word "you" means a sense of distance, and sometimes hostile, in addition to the usual meaning of respect) as close people, to each other.

Therefore, when the Great Purge was launched in the army in the mid-30s, it could not have been imagined that the spearhead of the purge would be directed at Yegorov. However, in early 1940, when Yegorov disappeared forever after being abruptly removed from an important post in his post, the unexpected happened.

After Tukhachevsky's hasty execution, the Great Purge did not stop, and more and more people became victims. It was an era of petty reports and anonymous letters, and any soldier who had been punished, any subordinate who was disgruntled with his superiors, could take revenge on officers and superiors he did not like and falsely accuse them.

The internal affairs organs, on the other hand, have implemented the absurd procedure of "arresting first, then examining the case." Under the severe torture and inducement of confessions by the rebels, the people who were falsely accused had no choice but to "bite" people indiscriminately, and as a result, there were more and more reactionary officers of the coup cabal, and the more they were killed. Some of the testimonies involved Yegorov, and he was doomed.

On February 21, 1940, with Stalin's approval, Yegorov was arrested in the army sanatorium in Arkhangelskoye, Moscow, and was also thrown into the basement of the Lubyanka, and the arrest warrant was not reissued until April 29.

Yegorov wrote to ask for Stalin's forgiveness, but Stalin was completely indifferent to Yegorov's letter asking for forgiveness, although Yegorov mentioned in the letter that during the civil war, they had more than once drunk soup from a farmer's basin and slept with a soldier's overcoat...... But that was a long time ago, and now it's meaningless.

Among the first commanders in command of the Soviets, comparable to Khachevsky in terms of influence and combat honor, there was another figure of great influence: the commander of the Special Army of the Red Banner Far East, Blyukher.

He was a mythical hero of the period of the Russian Civil War and foreign armed intervention, a famous Soviet military strategist and party activist, he was originally an ordinary fitter in the town of Metishi, and later became the first person to be awarded the Order of the Red Banner and the Order of the Red Star.

The troops under his command were famous in various battlefields, distinguished themselves throughout the Soviet Union, he was the hero of the Lekop assault and the night battle of Spaske, the organizer of the conquerors of Siberia, the organizer of the victory over the White Guards and the Japanese armed interventionists in the Far East, the winner of numerous engagements and great battles.

In battle, he was wounded in 18 wounds, and was an outstanding military chief who had grown up under the leadership of the Bolsheviks through the crucible of civil war.

After the end of the civil war, he made unremitting efforts to strengthen the army. In October 1924 and May 1926, he was appointed by the Soviet government under the pseudonym "Galen" to serve as Sun Yat-sen's adviser to the Guangzhou Revolutionary Government and head of the Whampoa Military Academy adviser group twice, playing a pivotal role in the Northern Expedition of the National Revolution and doing a lot of useful work for the revolutionary cause of the Chinese people.

In July 1938, the Japanese army invaded and occupied two highlands on the shores of Lake Hassan in the Soviet Far East. Blyukhel was ordered to destroy the invaders, but due to the weather and fears of bombing his troops and Korean villages by mistake, Blyukhel decided to make careful preparations before letting the plane take off, but this move caused great displeasure to Stalin.

Coupled with the fanning and slander of some, Stalin became suspicious of the invaders, although Blyukher finally drove the invaders out. On 18 August, Blyukhel was recalled to Moscow from the Far East, but Stalin had no intention of talking to him. At this time, his fate has been decided, acquaintances are avoiding him, and some even "bite" him a few times.

Blyukhel was immediately placed under house arrest by Stalin in the health resort of Sochi, where he was officially secretly arrested in early 1940 and imprisoned in Levertovo prison. During the interrogation, the rebels demanded that he confess that he was a "Japanese spy" and that he had participated in the "military fascist conspiracy."

The reputable marshal was very strong and refuted all his false accusations. He was brutally tortured and beaten, beaten to the point of unrecognizable flesh and blood. During the interrogation, both eyes were broken, one eye was knocked out, and there was a thick layer of blood on the face, and the whole face was bruised and purple, and it was frighteningly swollen.

Because of his high prestige at home and inside and outside the military, Stalin did not dare to publicly accuse Blyukhel or even announce that he had been arrested. (To be continued.) )