[Andropov]

In the West, the very name of Stalin conjures images of inhuman psychopathic terror and brutality. Stalin's contemporaries, however, have a differing view:

According to an interview with Stalin's adopted son, disproving the myth that Stalin was an uneducated brute"

Sergeev: He gave us books. On my 7th Birthday he gave me "Robinson Crusoe" by Daniel Defoe, and for my 8th Birthday - "The Jungle Book" by Kipling.

Glushik: Did Stalin read a lot? Which books were in his library?

Sergeev: Stalin read many books. And each time we saw each other he would ask me what am I reading at the moment and what do I think of it. Right before the entrance to his cabinet, on the floor there was a tower of books. He would look through them and set aside those which he would put in his personal library in the Kremlin. I don't know what happened to it now.

He always read books with a pencil in his hand, marking something. The majority of his books were philosophical works and our classics. He liked Gogol', Salti'kov-Shedrin, Tolstoy, Leskov, had works of Esenin, Mayakovsky, Pasternak, Bulgakov (famous Russian writers). The last one Stalin respected and told us: "This writer shows that heroes were not only in the Red Army. Heroes are those who love their Motherland more then life itself. And such, unfortunately, didn't fight only on our side." In fact Stalin payed special attention to education of Russian language and literature. Knowing who we want to be when we grow up he asked us: "So you will be in the military. And what is the most important subject for a soldier?" We began naming diffrent subjects: mathematics, physics, fitness training. And he told us: "No. Russian Language and Literature. You have to speak so that everyone could understand you and in extreme battle conditions you have to speak brief. And you too have to understand what you are being told. A military must be able to express himself both verbally and in writing. In war you will face such situations, which you have never faced before. You will have to make decisions. And if you read a lot, then in your memory you will find a hint how to act and what to do. Literature will help you."

Glushik: Did Stalin choose books to read himself or did he consider his friends and comrades taste in literature?

Sergeev: He always picked books to read himself. He looked through and read a huge amount of literature. I never counted exactly how many, but I always seen him reading and writing from dawn to dusk. He would be brought new documents and old ones would be taken away. There was a Commissar of the Artillery Command - Georgi' Savchenko, who even knew Stalins parents, and knew Stalin himself very well. He wrote that Stalin read 500 pages a day. I think that's true.

Glushik: Did he have preferences is the genre of books?

Sergeev: No, he never had specific preferences, he ready a bit of everything and always learned something and thought how to use it for the benefit of the soviet government.

Stalin's attitude towards written text:

In Summer, August of 1934, on his country-house in Sochi, Stalin and Kirov were working on an order to make a new school-book "History of USSR", which was published in 1937 under professor Shestakovs editing. Stalin himself new history brilliantly, including history of war, he didn't just know all the great wars and battles, he knew what got them started, the proportion of forces and how they ended: he studied and knew why did one side loose and how and why the other came out victorious.
Me and Vasily were given assignments. We both received a book - Illovai'sky and Bel'yarminov history schoolbook. We had to read it and answer questions, do assignments on what we read. I think Stalin and Kirov didn't just want us to learn it, they also wanted to know our attitude on what we read, what interested us more and with what we had difficulties. While Kirov was away we had a little free time, but when he arrived, we completely forgot that there is a sea near us.
The books were really old, and their condition was proof enough. And when Stalin gave them to us, we laid them down on the terrace and gone out to play volleyball to a neighboring house. When we returned we saw that the entire terrace was filled with something white and Stalin was walking around and was picking something up. Thats when we realized that something was wrong, so we ran to the terrace and saw that he was picking up pages. Turned out there was a strong wind and it tore apart one of the books (and it turned out to be one of mine), and so Stalin was walking around, gathering its pages. When he saw us, he told me "Do you have an ass instead of a head?" But that flash of anger instantly died and he calmly explained to me, that in that book were centuries of history, and that people literally shed blood to collect and store all that knowledge, and that later scientists and historians spent dozens of years working with that material, to provide us with knowledge of mankinds history. "And you?" He then told us to get awl, some thread, glue and peace it back together. We spent the following several days working on that book, with great effort. Finlay we showed it to Stalin, and he said: "You did good. Now you know how to treat books". It was a lesson we never forgot, ever since then I don't dare to tear even a newspaper. And Vasily from that moment on and until the end of his life was always extremely careful with books.

Stalin's attitude towards religion:

Sergeev: No we never celebrated any religious holidays. However everybody used such phrases as "Thank God", "God protect", "God forgive", and Stalin sometimes used those too. I never heard Stalin say a single bad or even negative word about the Church, Faith or Religion. In fact I remember how, I think, in 1931 or 32, right across the school where Vasily studied, there was a church. One day when there was a procession inside and everybody were praying, some of the guys from his school were shooting with a fake gun nearby (the fake guns referred to in this situation are made to sound like real guns and have a small fire spark to make it look like its firing, originally made for self-defense, to fool aggressors that you have an actual gun), Vasily didn't participate in this but he did tell Stalin about it. So he asked him: "Why were they doing that? Those people pray, they don't interrupt your studying, so why are you interrupting their praying?" Then he asked Vasily: "Do you love and respect your grandmother?" And Vasily answered that of course he did, she was after all his fathers mother. Then Stalin told him: "She prays too", and Vasily asked: "Why?", and father answered: "Maybe she knows something that you don't".
Stalin knew matters of religion very well, he had many books, including ones about history of religions. He wrote important articles on the matter as well. For instance in his article "Against destruction of Churches" he explains, that churches - are cultural monuments of our Motherland. And to destroy them would be destroying cultural heritage. In his article "Forbidding political pursuit for faith" he speaks about the importance to stop hunting people for their faith.

I was present at Stalin funeral from the beginning and to the end, and amongst the people who came to pay their respects to him, were many priests and other church servants.

Stalin's humor and love of gardening:

Glushik: Did Stalin enjoy humor?

Sergeev: Always. No matter what, in any situation. He often quoted Gogol', Salti'kov-Shedrin, Leskov, Zoshenko and other funny things. He and Kirov knew well Satirist-writers and classics of the genre.
They also had personal humor, like Kirov would call Stalin the "Great Leader of all Peoples and Times". He would joke: "Listen, maybe you can help me, you are more educated then me, the Great Leader of what else are you? Other then Times and Peoples, what else is there?"
And Stalin called him "The Beloved Leader of the Leningrad Proletariat" and also liked to joke around: "And not just of the Leningrad Proletariat, but of the Bakinsk proletariat, perhaps of the entire North-Caucasus proletariat! Wait, "the Great Leader of what else are you?" What do you think? My head is not the House of Sovnarkom (From Russian "Soviet Narodnih Commissarov" - Soviet of the Peoples Commissars) to know everything!"
Stalin and Kirov always fruitfully spend time, even during the so called vacations. On his country-house in Zubalovo, Stalin and Kirov would grab gardening tools and go to the vegetable-garden. He loved hand-labor, just like everyone in the family, in fact love for labor was developed and appreciated in our family. At his country-house in Sochi Stalin himself grew lemons, apricots, peaches, took care of them himself when had the opportunity, and those trees nicely grew fruits, and Stalin would offer guests and the country-house staff a treat of his own-grown fruits. He and Kirov discussed how to best grow them and if it was possible to cultivate them in other regions of the country. For instance Stalin tried growing watermelons at his country-house outside Moscow. I think he wanted to make sure himself if it was possible to grow them in our climate and then spread experience how to grow them across the country.

H.G. Wells in 1937 conducted an interview with Joseph Stalin, speaking with him at length about politics, history, and economics- Stalin's erudition is clearly demonstrated in this interview: http://rationalrevolution.net/special/l ... 835_44.htm

Wells later recalled his meeting with Stalin:

All lingering anticipations of a dour sinister Highlander vanished at the sight of him. He is one of those people who in a photograph or painting become someone entirely different. He is not easy to describe, and many descriptions exaggerate his darkness and stillness. His limited sociability and a simplicity that makes him inexplicable to the more consciously disingenuous, has subjected him to the strangest inventions of whispering scandal. His harmless, orderly, private life is kept rather more private than his immense public importance warrants, and when, a year or so ago, his wife died suddenly of some brain lesion, the imaginative [people] spun a legend of suicide which a more deliberate publicity would have made impossible. All such shadowy undertow, all suspicion of hidden emotional tensions, ceased forever, after I had talked to him for a few minutes.
My first impression was of a rather commonplace-looking man dressed in an embroidered white shirt, dark trousers and boots, staring out of the window of a large, generally empty, room. He turned rather shyly and shook hands in a friendly manner. His face also was commonplace, friendly and commonplace, not very well modelled, not in any way "fine." He looked past me rather than at me but not evasively; it was simply that he had none of the abundant curiosity which had kept Lenin watching me closely from behind the hand he held over his defective eye, all the time he talked to me.
The conversation hung on a phase of shyness. We both felt friendly, and we wanted to be at our ease with each other, and we were not at our ease. He had evidently a dread of self-importance in the encounter; he posed not at all, but he knew we were going to talk of very great matters. He sat down at a table and Mr. Umansky [the translator] sat down beside us, produced his notebook and patted it open in a competent, expectant manner.
I felt there was heavy going before me but Stalin was so ready and willing to explain his position that in a little while the pause for interpretation was almost forgotten in the preparation of new phrases for the argument. I had supposed there was about forty minutes before me, but when at that period I made a reluctant suggestion of breaking off, he declared his firm intention of going on for three hours. And we did. We were both keenly interested in each other's point of view. What I said was the gist of what I had intended to say....
I had never met a man more candid, fair, and honest, and to these qualities it is, and to nothing occult and sinister, that he owes his tremendous undisputed ascendancy in Russia. I had thought before I saw him that he might be where he was because men were afraid of him, but I realize that he owes his position to the fact that no one is afraid of him and everybody trusts him.
Wells, Herbert George. Experiment in Autobiography. New York: Macmillan. 1934, p. 687-689

Another myth about Stalin is that his famous personality cult was the result of his own vanity and narcissism. This is totally false:

The degree to which Stalin himself relished the cult surrounding him is debatable. Like Lenin, Stalin acted modestly and unassumingly in public. In the 1930s, he made several speeches that diminished the importance of individual leaders and disparaged the cult forming around him, claiming that such a cult was un-Bolshevik; instead, he emphasized the importance of broader social forces. Stalin claimed that the only reason Lenin could acceptably be adored as a leader was because Lenin understood these social forces, and therefore knew how to most effectively channel the desires of the Soviet people. Stalin's public actions seemed to support his professed disdain of the cult: Stalin often edited reports of Kremlin receptions, cutting applause and praise aimed at him and adding applause for other Soviets leaders.[15] Additionally, in 1936, Stalin passed a ban on renaming places after him.[16]

Privately, Stalin claimed that he had tried to stop the pervasive level of frenzied devotion, but that everyone assumed he was acting out of false modesty. He admitted that he understood the cult of personality was a necessary evil among the simpler section of the Soviet population, who were used to worshipping a tsar, but feared that for the intelligentsia, this attention on the individual would take the focus away from Party ideas.[17] Artyom Sergeev, Stalin’s adopted son, recalled a fight between Stalin and his biological son Vasily. After Stalin found out that Vasily had used his famous last name to escape punishment for one of his drunken debauches, Stalin screamed at him. “‘But I’m a Stalin too,’ retorted Vasily. ‘No, you’re not,’ said Stalin. ‘You’re not Stalin and I’m not Stalin. Stalin is Soviet power. Stalin is what he is in the newspapers and the portraits, not you, not even me!’” To some degree, Stalin accepted the Soviet people's dedication to him as an embodiment of the Party, but he discouraged all interest in his private and family life, and divulged only limited personal information.[18] The Finnish communist Arvo Tuominen reports a sarcastic toast proposed by Stalin at a New Year Party in 1935 in which he said, "Comrades! I want to propose a toast to our patriarch, life and sun, liberator of nations, architect of socialism [he rattled off all the appellations applied to him in those days] – Josef Vissarionovich Stalin, and I hope this is the first and last speech made to that genius this evening."[19]

More on Stalin's supposed vanity and materialism:

Glushik: Were toasts made in his honor?

Sergeev: Ofcourse. But if someone started overpraising him, he would joke about it. He always joked about the praises he received. He made toasts as well, in which he thanked everyone for their kind words. His toasts always had meaning in them, he always had some specific word for each person, which was simple, yet satisfying for the one, whom it was meant for.

Glushik: Did Stalin receive gifts?

Sergeev: Never! There were absolutely no gifts, ever! He didn't like getting presents, and everyone knew that.

Glushik: And did the country celebrate Stalins Birthday? Were there congratulations in the papers?

Sergeev: Yes, and when Stalin read them in the papers, he would joke about them. Stalin never liked being worshiped but he accepted it as something unavoidable, like something he had to go through with, even though he didn't enjoy it. And he never considered his Birthday a personal holiday, even less so as a national one.
I remember that on the 23rd of February, 1948, when Red Army Day was celebrated and it was an anniversary, there was a great concert in the Bolshoy Theater. Many who came mostly spoke about Stalin. He didn't interrupt anyone, but during a small break he spoke: "Comrades, I believe you forgot, where and why you came. I don't have an anniversary today, the Red Army does. I am telling this to those who have forgotten, who is celebrating an anniversary today. And that would be the Red Army and not Comrade Stalin".

Glushik: Perhaps he dressed more officially on hist Birthdays?

Sergeev: No, he always had the same clothes: soft boots, straight pants, and a french (service jacket). It was plain, simple and comfortable.

[The Immortal Goon]

So you're saying he was a nationalist chauvinist that loved the church? What a great internationalist and Marxist!

[Far-Right Sage]

Stalin, the original National Bolshevik.

Andropov's arguments may provide a more appealing view of Stalin for the right and syncretic Russian nationalists, but may be enraging Stalinists and orthodox Marxists as they seem to be vindicating Trotsky's position.

[Andropov]

Well, most Stalinists in Russia today, and indeed virtually all Communists and Communist organizations with the exception of insignificant Trotskyist and other internationalist groups, are unlikely to be enraged by these quotations- on the contrary, this only proves Stalin was a patriot of Russia and Russian culture (As Stalin himself said, "I am a Russian of Georgian descent"). Considering Russia achieved its greatest triumphs, greatest extent of geopolitican influence, and greatest internal progress and growth under the Soviet period and under Stalin in particular, the line between Russian nationalists and Stalinists is murky indeed.

[The Immortal Goon]

and other internationalist groups

So I suppose that this covers any Marxist and Leninist group that doesn't follow Trotsky.

[Andropov]

The world "internationalist" has two meanings- one, the classical one used in the USSR, refers to friendship and non-hostility between nations and cooperation for the common good. The other refers to the destruction of all national culture and national self-awareness, championed by Frankfurt School "Marxists" and Trotskyist groups in the West.

[The Immortal Goon]

Lenin clearly indicates all over the place that he wanted the governments of nations to be overthrown and replaced into an international union of all.

Stalin, after his hilariously destructive "Third Period" theory—attacking any other leftist and going so far as to support Hitler in the August 9 1931 "Red Referendum"—had to scrap his total failure. Instead he adapted Lenin and Trotsky's concept of the United Front (circa 1917) by inventing the "Popular Front"(circa 1934)—which was a coalition with non socialist elements like the United Front, but while the United Front would make alliance with progressive movements, the Popular Front dictated that communists would slavishly beg the liberals to keep the status quo—thus "friendship and non-hostility between nations" and the abandonment of Marx, Engels, and Lenin.

Look, I don't mind if you like Stalin. Great, more power to you. There were worse movements and I have a lot of respect for some of the Stalinists on the board.

But don't pretend he just adapted Lenin. It's simply not true. He governed his own way (which you admire) which was often at odds with the direction Lenin would have taken.

[Andropov]

In the Bolshoy theater there were talks about the release of a new Opera of Glinka "Ivan Susanin". A commission with Bol'shakov listened to the performance and decided, that the finale "Glory to the Russian people" should be chucked out - too much religiosity and reference to the church.

- We will go ahead differently - said Stalin, - leave the finale, and chuck out Bol'shakov.

~~~~~

Stalin called the Union of Writers, but he was unable to reach any of its leadership, not with Fadeev nor with Surkov. Only their secretaries answered. Stalin later asked them:

-Why did the Roman Empire fall? And answered himself:
-Because it became ruled by its secretaries!

[A foreboding statement, considering Kruschev's seizure of power by the bureaucratic nomenklatura laid the foundation for the death and decline of the Soviet state]

~

Garriman at the Potsdam conference asked Stalin:

-After the Germans in 1941 were 80 km away from Moscow, you were probably overjoyed reading the news of the fall of Berlin?
-Czar Alexander I reached Paris - said Stalin

~

Stalin asked Soviet metereologists, what their chance of successful forecast is.

-40%, comrade Stalin
-Well, then predict the opposite, and you'll have 60%

~

In October 1941, when Moscow was under grave danger, talks were taking place regarding the transfer of Stalin to Kuybyshev, where was built a building for Stalin. But nobody asked Stalin, when he will leave the capital. The Politburo ordered the commander of Stalin's bodyguard division to ask this question:

-Comarde Stalin, when do we move our division? We are ready to move on Kuybushev.
-If needed, I will lead our division to battle myself.

[Soixante-Retard]

I wonder how freely one could have spoken about the Dear Leader when his goons are breathing down one's neck... Or is it just Stockholm Syndrome?

[Andropov]

Pathetic- what "goons"? The interviews with Sergeev were done after the collapse of the USSR in 2006. The idea that anyone criticizing anything in the USSR would be immediately executed is nonsensical propoganda.

Nowhere in the world outside the USSR is there such a continuous volume of pitiless criticism of every branch of government, every industrial enterprise and every cultural establishment. This perpetual campaign of exposure, which finds expression in every public utterance of the leading statesmen, in every issue of the press, and in every trade union or corporate meeting, is not only officially tolerated, but also deliberately instigated, as powerful incentive to improvement, alike in direction and in execution. Thus, the public speeches by Stalin, Molotov, Kaganovich, and other Soviet statesmen--in striking contrast with those of British, French or American statesmen--nearly always lead up to a tirade of criticism of some part of soviet administration. They usually begin with a glowing, and, as we may think, an optimistic account of the successful progress of the department or institution under discussion, of its remarkable achievements and of the valuable services of those working in it towards the "building of the socialist state." This is rendered all the more alluring by a vision of the dismal failure of capitalism in Europe and America. But invariably the speaker descends presently to an outspoken criticism of the technical shortcomings of the particular enterprise, with a detailed exposure of its partial or temporary failures, and often a scathing denunciation of particular cases of slackness or waste or other inefficiency, and similar criticism is invited from below. Official speakers will often blame conferences and congresses for their failure to criticize their own superior councils and committees, as well as their own officials, for their shortcomings and their failures.
Webb, S. Soviet Communism: A New Civilisation. London, NY: Longmans, Green, 1947, p. 628

Moreover, when these criticisms are published in the press, they provide the hostile foreigner with evidence of the apparent failure of Soviet communism. Indeed it is amusing to discover that nearly all the books that are now written proving that there is corruption, favoritism, and gross inefficiency in the management of industry and agriculture, are taken from reports of these discussions in the Soviet press, in Pravda, the organ of a Communist Party; in Isvestia, the organ of the government; in Trud, the organ of the trade union movement, and in many other local and specialist newspapers.
Webb, Sidney. The Truth about Soviet Russia. New York: Longmans, Green, 1942, p. 34

But it must not be assumed that the press is barren of criticism of the regime. Indeed, it is full of it--from Party meetings and in letters from the thousands of worker and peasant correspondents all over the Union. But it must all be helpful criticism, attacking bad administration or ill-advised regulations, and directed toward the upbuilding of Russia according to Soviet objectives. No criticism in opposition to the regime itself or its general program is tolerated.
Baldwin, Roger. Liberty under the Soviets, New York: Vanguard Press, 1928, p. 152

I happened upon a village meeting way out in Moscow province called to receive the tax bills for the year brought over by a messenger from the county seat. For two hours I listened to as bitter and excited a denunciation of the government as I ever heard anywhere. The regime was roundly scored as a robber of peasants. There was not the slightest fear or limitation in speaking out. It even looked for a while as if the young messenger were to be mobbed. When they calmed down, with the appointment of a committee to take up their grievances, they found enough hope for the village solvency to vote money for new a fire apparatus and a new village bull. The meeting was convincing evidence of the lack of any fear of the government or of the police, and of a healthy resistance to what was to them injustice.
The offenses which the GPU controls have little relation to peasant life. I speak of that at the start to make it clear that the terrorism charged to the GPU does not exist for the masses of the Russian people.
Baldwin, Roger. Liberty Under the Soviets, New York: Vanguard Press, 1928, p. 178

~~~~~~

Criticism towards Stalin himself was also not always punished by death as Western propoganda alleges.

The poet Semyeon Olender recounted a story:

In the '20s I wrote a poem, in which I attacked both Stalin and Trotsky- between them was a constant feud. I sent this to "Komsomolka" (journal).

In a few days, I received a call from someone calling himself Kartlinskiy, and said, that he doesn't understand the poem's position: both Stalin and Trotsky are attacked.

-I don't like them both- I said
-What, you want to become the Soviet Lermontov? Remember that you are not Lermontov, and comrade Stalin is not Nikolai I! - and he hung up.

Then I found out that Kartlinskiy was one of Stalin's psuedonyms.

Olender lived until 1969.

Also:

That this Soviet patriotism excludes all criticism is, moreover, by no means the truth. "Bolshevist self-criticism" is certainly no empty expression. One reads in the newspapers a succession of most bitter attacks on numerous real or imaginary grievances and on prominent individuals, whose fault, allegedly, these grievances are; I was astonished at industrial meetings by the strength of the criticisms leveled at the managers of the industries, and I stood amazed before news posters which attacked or caricatured principals and responsible people with positive savagery. And foreigners are not prohibited from expressing their honest opinions. I have already mentioned that not only did the national newspapers leave my articles uncensored, even when I deplored certain intolerances or excessive Stalin-worship, or when I demanded more light on the conduct of an important political trial; what is more, they took pains to reproduce as faithfully as possible in the translation every nuance of these very passages, negative as they were. The prominent national personalities whom I met were without exception more interested in criticism than in indiscriminating praise. They like to measure their own achievement with that of the West, and they measure accurately, often all too accurately, and when their own work falls short of that of the West, they do not hesitate to admit it. Indeed they often overrate Western achievements to their own disadvantage. But when a foreigner indulges in petty and inconsequent fault-finding and loses sight of the value of the whole achievement in unimportant shortcomings, Soviet people quickly lose patience, while empty hypocritical compliments they can never forgive.
Feuchtwanger, Lion. Moscow, 1937. New York: The Viking Press, 1937, p. 40

As strange as it may seem, the Stalin period was actually the most democratic in the history of the USSR (Lenin's rule excluded). Criticism from the bottom up, i.e. from the workers and peasants up to the managers and bureaucrats, a common feature during Stalin's reign, was eliminated by Kruschev's entrenchment of the nomenklatura as a privileged class, which ultimately sowed the seeds for the Soviet system's slow decay and eventual collapse.

~~~~~

Stalin's sense of mercy was also well known, disproving the image of ruthless and bloodthirsty tyrant.

When Commander Mehlis was found to be at fault for a major loss during the war, he was ordered to go before a war tribune. Before his judgment, he went to Stalin and fell to his knees.

-Comrade Stalin! Order me to shoot this stupid kike [zhid, negative term for Jews] in the head! [referring to himself]
-Well, if there is such self-criticism...

Stalin pardoned Mehlis and he went on to write for Pravda.

[Potemkin]

When Commander Mehlis was found to be at fault for a major loss during the war, he was ordered to go before a war tribune. Before his judgment, he went to Stalin and fell to his knees.

-Comrade Stalin! Order me to shoot this stupid kike [zhid, negative term for Jews] in the head! [referring to himself]
-Well, if there is such self-criticism...

Stalin pardoned Mehlis and he went on to write for Pravda.

Ah yes, the "gloomy demon" Mekhlis. Mekhlis' harshness towards himself was exceeded only by his harshness towards everybody else.

[quetzalcoatl]

Stalin was no doubt a complex character, but his paranoia was responsible for many horrible judgments - most damning was his liquidation of the Red Army officer corps in the runup to WWII.

[fuser]

*sigh*
Stalin can be criticized for tons of things but there was no liquidation of officer corps prior to ww2. The chronic lack of officers was due to massive expansion (in a very small time period due to German threat) of red army rather than any cruel military purge. The purge affected around 3-4 % of officer corps where many were merely expelled from the communist party and many other were rehabilitated any way.

In long run Soviet Political leadership were right in rooting out the scums out of the military, one of the reason why SU remained stable(politically unlike ww1) during the dark days of the great patriotic war, there was no bomb under the stalin's table planted by some Russian stauffenberg.

and yes I do believe there was some sort of conspiracy among the military circles of red army conspiring to challenge the political leadership of that time.

[Andropov]

Furthermore, the purges actually increased the effectiveness of Red Army leadership:

Before the repressions, 29% of Red Army officers had a higher education. By 1938, the number would be 38%. By 1941, 52%. Officers not particularly skilled or notable for their efforts, usually in their position only because of their political allegiance during the Civil War were replaced by more educated and competent ones

~

On Stalin's supposed insatiable hunger for power:

From the memoirs of Leonid Efremov:

Suddenly, someone shouted from the place: "We need to choose comrade Stalin as a Secretary General of the CPSU." All rose, applause rang out. Ovation lasted several minutes. We (a people sitting in the audience) thought that it was quite natural. But then Stalin waved his hand, calling for silence, and when the applause died down, suddenly to members of the Central Committee said, "No! Free me from the duties of the Secretary General of the CPSU Central Committee and of the Chairman of the Council of Ministers of the USSR." There was a shock after these words, reigned a marvelous silence ... Malenkov quickly went to the podium and said: "Comrades! We should all unanimously and with one voice request the Comrade Stalin, our leader and teacher, to continue to be Secretary General of the CPSU." Aganin followed by thunderous applause and cheers. Then Stalin took to the podium and said: "The Plenum not need applause. Need to resolve issues without emotion, in a businesslike manner. I beg to release me from the duties of the Secretary General of the CPSU Central Committee and Chairman of the Council of Ministers. I am old. I do not read papers. Elect a secretary of another! ". People sitting in the hall murmured. Marshal Timoshenko stand out from first series and said loudly: "Comrade Stalin, people won't understand this! We are one and all elect you as our leader - Secretary General of the CPSU. Other solutions can not be. " Everyone stood up, applauding warmly, that meant a support for comrade Tymoshenko. Stalin had long stood and looked into the hall, then waved his hand and sat down.

~

Diary of Lavrenty Beria

23 September 1942

Today for the first time in my life I saw in Koba's eyes tears. I was reporting about Stalingrad, how the people are fighting. When I reached the period [end of the report], I felt relief. He is trying to keep face, but where do you hide your heart? He couldn't hold it in.

[Smilin' Dave]

Before the repressions, 29% of Red Army officers had a higher education. By 1938, the number would be 38%. By 1941, 52%. Officers not particularly skilled or notable for their efforts, usually in their position only because of their political allegiance during the Civil War were replaced by more educated and competent ones

What percentage of the new officer corps in 1937 had experience in command of the rank they ended up in, and how many had actually served in a conflict?

[Andropov]

I don't have these statistics, but look at who was purged and who was replaced for yourself- people like Yakir, who had never experienced combat as a soldier directly, were replaced by people like Zhukov, who fought in WW1 himself. The "purges" were a reorganization of the army that likely played a positive role, although we can never know for sure until we have a time machine and see the Red Army's performance with Tukhachevsky instead of Zhukov in charge of the army.