Stalin's General (46 page)

Against this backdrop it is not surprising that in his memoirs Zhukov went to inordinate lengths to defend his war record while displaying a marked reluctance to discuss his failures and shortcomings, not
least to avoid providing critics with yet more ammunition with which to attack him.

When Zhukov began writing his memoirs it was an act of faith since there was no possibility they would be published while Khrushchev remained in power. When Ella asked why he bothered, he told her that he was writing “for the table” and “for history.”
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In October 1964, however, the Presidium, disillusioned by the failure of Khrushchev's domestic and foreign policies and fed up with his domineering leadership style, removed him from power. Like Zhukov, Khrushchev retired to his country dacha to write his own memoirs. Published in the West in the 1970s, they caused a sensation and the revelations they contained dominated western views of Soviet history for many years. In the second volume, published in 1974, Khrushchev devoted a whole chapter to Zhukov's dismissal in 1957. He reiterated that, in his opinion, Zhukov had Bonapartist tendencies and that was why it had been necessary to dismiss him as defense minister. At the same time Khrushchev was careful to show Zhukov some respect: “I respected Zhukov for his intellect and for his common sense. We spent a lot of time talking business and also duck hunting together.… Zhukov was exceptionally perceptive and flexible for a military man.”
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Zhukov's rehabilitation after Khrushchev's fall was not immediate but it was not long delayed. In March 1965 Zhukov wrote to the party leadership arguing for his rehabilitation on grounds that he had been a victim of Khrushchev's dictatorial tendencies.
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There does not appear to have been a reply to this letter but a month later TASS, the official Soviet news agency, broadcast some remarks about Zhukov by his old adversary, Konev. Zhukov had his shortcomings, said Konev, but he was a great military commander who should rightly take part in the imminent celebrations of the twentieth anniversary of victory in the Great Patriotic War. On May 8 Brezhnev, the new Soviet leader, delivered a keynote speech in the Kremlin on that anniversary. Zhukov was invited to attend and when he entered the meeting hall he was given a standing ovation. There was more applause when Brezhnev mentioned Zhukov's (and Stalin's) name in his speech. The next day
Zhukov was among the marshals standing once again on the rostrum above Lenin's mausoleum reviewing the Victory Parade. At the postparade reception in the Kremlin the crowd applauded Zhukov as he took his place at his table. Later, Zhukov went to the Moscow Writers' Club where he gave an unscripted speech that impressed Konstantin Simonov for its restraint and modesty.
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It was clear that years of Khrushchevite attacks had done little to dent Zhukov's popularity. He was—and would remain—the great general who had saved the Soviet Union from catastrophic defeat by Hitler and then led the country to a great victory.

In November 1966 Zhukov attended a conference celebrating the twenty-fifth anniversary of the battle of Moscow along with other “Marshals of Victory,” including Konev, Rokossovsky, and Chuikov. When the marshals gathered on the platform the audience burst into applause that lasted several minutes. As the clapping died a delegate shouted “glory to Marshal Zhukov!” and the applause started all over again—a display of adulation that did not please the party representative chairing the gathering.
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That same month, on the eve of his seventieth birthday, Zhukov was awarded his fifth Order of Lenin—one of nearly seventy medals and decorations he received during his lifetime that included awards from Britain, France, the United States, Poland, Mongolia, Italy, Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia, Egypt, and China.
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In June 1965 the main Soviet military history journal,
Voenno-Istoricheskii Zhurnal
, published Zhukov's reply to Chuikov's criticism of his failure to capture Berlin in February 1945. This was the signal that it was once again permissible to publish Zhukov's writings and from then until the end of his life he was in constant demand to write, give interviews, and make personal appearances.
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In his public appearances Zhukov mainly spoke or wrote about the war but he also took an interest in contemporary events. For example, in one piece he warned that the Vietnam War must not be allowed to develop into a new world war, criticized China's role in world affairs and its attacks on the USSR (this was the time of the Sino-Soviet split), and warned of a possible rapprochement between Beijing and Washington.
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Among Zhukov's more notable publications were articles in weighty tomes on the battles of Moscow and Stalingrad published in
1968 and on Kursk in 1970.
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Zhukov was also interviewed for documentary films about the two battles. The script for the Stalingrad film was subjected to extensive correction by Zhukov, who advised the producers against the use of slang because it could damage the education of young people.
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Simonov observed Zhukov's interviews for the documentary on the battle of Moscow and was impressed by his iron concentration and recall of detail, even though he was in pain from a fall the day before.
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Zhukov's performance in both documentaries was somewhat stilted but confident and commanding. In August 1969 he was interviewed by Georgian television and told his viewers that their compatriot Stalin was “a great organiser of the struggle against Germany and its allies” who had demonstrated outstanding ability in the conduct of strategic operations and the will to fight the war through to final victory.
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Zhukov did not, however, spend all his time engaged in public activities or writing his memoirs. He looked after his daughter Maria, while Galina, now his second wife, who was a doctor and a specialist in infectious diseases, worked in a Moscow hospital. He also repaired relations with Era and Ella. He often went to the theater with Galina, including the Bolshoi, but preferred opera to ballet. He spent time in his garden and gathered mushrooms in the local woods. His dacha had a cinema room and the family watched many films together. He read a lot, not only military history and theory, but the classics of Russian literature. And, as ever, he went hunting and fishing.
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In July 1965 Zhukov was approached by Anna Mirkina, an editor at APN—the publishing arm of the Novosti press agency—about writing his memoirs. According to Mirkina, the approach was prompted by a proposal from a French publisher to produce a series of Soviet military and political memoirs. Zhukov had already been in some contact with Novosti. In early 1965 the agency had commissioned him to write an article on Germany's surrender. In March 1965 APN copied the article to the party leadership and requested permission to publish. The article was never published but the material it contained was later incorporated into the memoirs.
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Zhukov invited Mirkina to meet him at his dacha in Kuntsevo on the west side of Moscow. Zhukov's dacha (given to him by Stalin in 1942) was no small country cottage but a rather grand two-story house. Mirkina recalled the walls of the entrance hall as being decorated with photographs of Zhukov and his staff taken during the battle of Moscow. The hall led into a large and formally furnished dining room, in the middle of which stood a big oval table covered with a white cloth. Suspended over the table was a beautiful crystal chandelier. Along one wall there was a heavy oak sideboard and in one corner a chiming clock. Beside the clock was a small table on which stood a bust of Zhukov and a model of a T-34 tank. The dining room opened onto a terrace with a small round table and two easy chairs.

Zhukov, dressed informally in his at-home clothes, led Mirkina through to his study, a fair-sized but comfortable and well-lit room. It contained a large writing table covered with worn green leather that Zhukov sat at with his back to the window, taking advantage of the light. The room was full of the books Zhukov used in writing his memoirs and a picture of his mother hung on the wall.
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Once Mirkina had satisfied Zhukov that APN was a legitimate publisher who would support him in telling the truth about the war he was happy to allow them to publish the memoirs. The contract was signed in August 1965 and it galvanized Zhukov to finish writing. By autumn 1966 he had delivered to the publisher a 1,430-page typed manuscript.
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Zhukov did not type it himself, nor did he like to dictate. He wrote longhand because, he told Mirkina, it enabled him to organize his thoughts. His pages were then typed up by Galina's mother, Klavdiya Evgeniya.
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By the mid-1960s Zhukov had been granted access to the Ministry of Defense archive at Podolsk on the outskirts of Moscow where he studied some 1,500 documents.
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The inclusion of many citations from archive documents lent his memoirs a unique air of authenticity and authority and made them a key source for historians in the era before the collapse of the USSR and the opening of Soviet archives to scholarly research.

Zhukov did not write his memoirs in isolation but in consultation, conversation, and correspondence with former colleagues in the High Command and other wartime comrades. Among them were Vasilevsky,
Bagramyan, and Rokossovsky. He also talked with the editors of
Voenno-Istoricheskii Zhurnal
and with the representatives of various publishing houses, journals, and newspapers seeking his contributions and advice. Not all of these interactions were positive. In April 1965, for example, he wrote to Rokossovsky to correct mistakes he alleged the marshal had made in an interview about the war with
Literaturnaya Gazeta
. Zhukov was particularly concerned about Rokossovsky's failure to challenge myths about the war spawned during the Khrushchev era, not least the exaggeration of the importance of Khrushchev's role in events.
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Zhukov's closest confidant during this period was General A. N. Antipenko, who had been his supplies officer when he commanded the 1st Belorussian Front in 1945 and had also served with him in Germany after the war. Antipenko recalled that shortly after the October 1957 plenum he came across Zhukov at a health center. When they embraced Zhukov asked him why he was not afraid. When Antipenko asked him what there was to be afraid of Zhukov replied that on the way to the center he had met two other generals of his acquaintance who had crossed the street to avoid him. Why would he want to do that, responded Antipenko, when he had served with Zhukov during the war? Thereafter the two men spent a lot of time together—hunting, fishing, going to the theater, and discussing Zhukov's memoirs.
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After Khrushchev's fall Antipenko became the leading advocate of Zhukov's rehabilitation, pointing out to Brezhnev and other party leaders that such a move would be very popular both at home and abroad. After publication of Zhukov's memoirs in 1969, Antipenko wrote a letter to the main party journal,
Kommunist
, urging a reversal of the verdict of the October 1957 plenum.
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This letter was not published and there is no evidence that such a radical step was even contemplated during the Brezhnev era. The problem with repudiating the 1957 plenum was that it would have called into question Brezhnev's judgment as well as that of all the other members of the Central Committee who had supported Khrushchev's assault on Zhukov, including Mikhail Suslov, who had led the attack and remained the party's top ideologist under Brezhnev. It could also have raised questions about the treatment of Molotov, Malenkov, and Kaganovich—the antiparty
group expelled from the party leadership by the June 1957 plenum—who were lobbying for their political rehabilitation, too.

Zhukov's close relationship with Antipenko during his retirement was an anomaly. During his adult life Zhukov had many followers, admirers, comrades in arms, drinking and hunting buddies, and professional associates, but few intimate male friends. Apart from Antipenko, only Bagramyan could be said to have sustained a deep and long-lasting friendship with Zhukov. At certain times in his life Zhukov was close to Vasilevsky, too, but not during his disgrace under Khrushchev, after which the relationship between the two men never recovered fully. The partial estrangement was no doubt reinforced by Era's divorce from Vasilevsky's son Yuri.

Having finished the writing of his memoirs Zhukov now faced the problem of negotiating their contents with Soviet censors. All Soviet publications had to undergo some process of official vetting and editing and it proved to be a long drawn-out process for Zhukov. In December 1967 an impatient Zhukov appealed personally to Brezhnev to expedite matters, and he did so again in February 1968. But it was not until April 1968 that a group headed by Marshal Grechko, minister of defense, reported on the memoirs. The group's appraisal was generally positive but critical of Zhukov's tendency to inflate his own role and not pay sufficient attention to the collective contribution of the party, especially its leadership. The report focused in particular on Zhukov's treatment of the immediate prewar period, arguing that he undervalued the significance of the party's preparations for war. One specific point was that Zhukov was deemed to attribute too much importance to the negative impact of the 1930s purges of the Red Army. Grechko's conclusion was that the memoirs should be published but only after further editing and correction.
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The memoirs were then handed over to a specialist editorial group headed by historian G. A. Deborin. The Deborin group worked on the required changes in consultation with Zhukov, and with V. G. Komolov, a journalist employed by APN to mediate relations between the author and the editors. According to Komolov the editing was a fraught process and Zhukov bridled at many of the proposed changes.
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Nevertheless, the work proceeded quickly and by summer
1968 an approved text for publication had been agreed upon by the Central Committee.
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The hundreds of photographs published in the book also had to be approved by the censor.