Lev Mekhlis

Lev Mekhlis
Лев Ме́хлис
Photo of Lev Zakharovich Mekhlis
Minister of State Control
In office
19 March 1946 – 27 October 1950
Preceded by Vasily Popov
Succeeded by Vsevolod Merkulov
In office
6 September 1940 – 21 June 1941
Preceded by Rosalia Zemlyachka
Succeeded by Vasily Popov
Deputy Chairman of the Council of People's Commissars
In office
6 September 1940 – 15 May 1944
Premier Joseph Stalin
Full member of the 17th, 18th Orgburo
In office
14 January 1938 – 16 October 1952
Personal details
Born Lev Zakharovich Mekhlis
(1889-01-13)13 January 1889
Odessa Russian Empire
Died 13 February 1953(1953-02-13) (aged 64)
Moscow
Resting place Kremlin Wall Necropolis
Citizenship Soviet Union
Nationality USSR/Ukrainian
Political party The Communist Party of the Soviet Union (1918–53)
Poale Zion (1907–11)
Alma mater Institute of Red Professors
Awards Order of Military Valour grade 4
Signature Lev Mekhlis's signature
Military service
Years of service 1911–20, 1941–45

Lev Zakharovich Mekhlis (January 13, 1889 – February 13, 1953) was a Soviet politician.

Career

Born in Odessa, Mekhlis finished six classes of Jewish commercial school. He worked as a schoolteacher in 1904-1911. In 1907–1910 he was a member of the Zionist workers movement Poale Zion.

In 1911, he joined the Russian Army, where he served in the second grenadier artillery brigade. In 1912, he obtained the rank of bombardier. He served in the artillery in the First World War.

In 1918 he joined the Communist Party and until 1920 he did political work in the Red Army (commissioner of brigade, then 46th division, group of forces). In 1921–1922, he was the manager of administrative inspection in the People's commissariat of worker-peasant inspection (Peoples Commissar (Narkom) Joseph Stalin). In 1922–1926, he was the assistant to the secretary and the manager of the bureau of the secretariat of the Central Committee, in effect Stalin's personal secretary.

In 1926–1930 he took courses at the Communist Academy and in the Institute of Red Professors. From 1930 he was the head of the press corps Central Committee, and simultaneously a member of the editorial board, and then the editor in chief of the newspaper Pravda.

In 1937–1940, he was the deputy of the Peoples Commissar of Defense and the chief of the main political administration of the Red Army. From 1939 he was the member of Central Committee the CPSU (he had been a candidate since 1934), in 1938–1952 he was a member of the Orgburo of the Central Committee, in 1940–1941 Peoples Commissar of State Control (Goskontrolya).

In June 1941 he was newly assigned by the chief of main political administration and the deputy of the Peoples Commissar of Defense. Mekhlis was named army commissar of the 1st rank, which corresponded to the title of General of the Army. In 1942 he was the representative of the Stavka (headquarters) of supreme commander-in-chief at the Crimean Front, where he constantly disputed with General Dmitry Timofeyevich Kozlov. The leaders of the staff of the Front did not know whose orders to carry out – the commander's or Mekhlis’s.

The commander of the North-Caucasian Front, Marshal Semyon Budyonny, also could not control Mekhlis, who had no desire to be subordinated, only recognising orders which came directly from the Stavka. Mekhlis, during a stay at the post of the representative of Stavka, was occupied by the fact that he wrote sufficiently critical reports to senior officers.

After one such report Major General Tolbukhin was taken off the post of chief of staff of the front, which had carelessness in contrast the instruction of Stalin to express opinion about the need for the front considering the need for being defended. So he attempted through the Stavka to replace the front commander, Kozlov, with Konstantin Rokossovsky or Klykov. At the same time in reports to Stalin he attempted to distance himself from the failures which the Crimean Front suffered, and to lay the entire responsibility on the front commander.

In regard to this, Stalin sent a telegram to Mekhlis, in which he subjected to his rigid criticism for similar behavior:

Crimean front, t. Mekhlis:

Your code message #254 (I) received. Your hold a strange position that you work there only as a detached observer who is not accountable for the events at the Crimean Front. Your position sure is convenient, yet it is rotten to the core. At the Crimean Front, you are not an outside observer, but the responsible representative of Stavka, who is accountable for every success and failure that takes place at the Front, and who is required to correct, right there and then, any mistake made by the military officers.

You, along with the military officers, will answer for never reinforcing the weakness of the left flank of the Front. If "everything seemed to indicate that the opponent will begin an advance first thing in the morning", yet you haven't done everything needed to repel their advance, because you limited your involvement to only passive criticisms, then you will make things worse for yourself. So it seems that you still have not figured out that we sent you to the Crimean Front not as a government auditor but as a responsible representative of Stavka.

You demand that we replace Kozlov with anyone else, even with Hindenburg. Yet it is impossible for you to be unaware that Soviet reserves do not have anyone named Hindenburg. The situation in Crimea is not complicated, and you could have taken care of them all with what you had all by yourself. If you only did not sideline your attack aviation, but used it against the opponent's tanks and live enemy targets, the opponent would not have been able to break through the Front and their tanks would not have rolled through it. You do not need to be a 'Hindenburg' to grasp such a simple thing, while sitting for two months at the Crimean Front. Stalin.[1]

ZK VKP(6)9.V.42r>>.

After the crushing defeat in May 1942 on the Crimean Front (of 250,000 soldiers and officers on the Crimean Front in 12 days of fighting, 162,282 people, 65%, were lost forever) he was taken from the post of the deputy people's commissar of defense and the chief of the main political administration of the Red Army. He was reduced in rank by two levels, to that of corps commissar.

In 1942–1946, he was a member of the military council of a number of armies and fronts, from December 6, 1942, he was a lieutenant general, from July 29, 1944 he was a colonel general. In 1946–1950, he was the minister of government control of the USSR.

On October 27, 1950 he was discharged due to his health. He died in February 1953. His ashes were interred at the Kremlin Wall Necropolis in Red Square.

Lev Mekhlis was awarded four Orders of Lenin, five other orders and numerous medals.

Publications

References

  1. ↑ Николай Викторович Стариков; Дмитрий Беляев (2015). Россия, Крым, история. "Издательский дом ""Питер""". pp. 109–. ISBN 978-5-496-01363-5.

External links

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