(4 of 9)
When he returned to Belorussia, under Timoshenko's command, Zhukov became a crack training officer. Patiently and methodically he polished the rough muzhik regiments. Once he was reported to have shined a soldier's boots as an example to a mud-footed unit. When the Red army began to get tanks, Zhukov was assigned to make tankists out of peasant lads. He got a spit-and-polish reputation by insisting that all tanks be washed down after the day's work. Appearing in the controlled press, little stories like these were no accident: somewhere along the line Zhukov had attracted Stalin's attention. In 1935 his name appeared over a sharp attack on Tukhachevsky's conduct of the Red army maneuvers, and the following year he was given the honor of appearing on a military committee that approved the draft of Stalin's U.S.S.R. constitution.
The Comrades Disappear. This was a time when Trotsky was already in exile and the party purged, but in his bid for supreme power, Stalin was still meeting opposition in the army. The political department of the army was quietly infiltrated by secret police, chief among whom was a certain Ivan Serov. Stalin began a clean sweep of the military apparatus. His commissars indicted Tukhachevsky and seven other top generals for treason, brought them to secret trial and had them shot within 48 hours. Within a few weeks all but a few of the 80 members of the Soviet War Council had disappeared, and by the time the purge was over, 374 generals and an estimated 30,000 officers had been liquidated. What must it have been like for Professional Soldier Zhukov to stand by while hundreds of his old comrades disappeared, to see the whole army structure virtually destroyed? Men who knew him then say that he never smiled, never was gay, gave the impression of being stonyhearted.
The first effect of a weakened Red army was a Japanese penetration deep into Outer Mongolia in 1939. Stalin sent Zhukov there. By bringing tanks from a railhead 150 miles away and using them with air support, Zhukov achieved complete tactical surprise, annihilated the Japanese Sixth Army and drove the Japanese back into Manchuria. A grateful Stalin made him a Hero of the Soviet Union.
The Irregulars Fade. For his new Red army command, Stalin pulled in the old irregulars—Budenny, Voroshilov, Timoshenko—but the decapitated Red army was desperately in need of a professional brain. Zhukov took a hand in the creation of a new officer corps, pressed for a "lone command . . . extending the rights and authority of the commander . . . introducing ranks of generals." But when Russia attacked Finland in 1940, the new command organization fell apart. Field commanders, old, half-literate civil war irregulars recently promoted from junior ranks, fell back in confusion before the tough, disciplined Finns, and some were shot in front of their regiments. To improve morale, Zhukov and Timoshenko persuaded Stalin to abolish the hated commissars. It was only after the two had taken a direct hand in the Finnish war that the Mannerheim Line was broken. Said Zhukov proudly: "This was the acid test . . . the only instance to date of a breach being driven through modern, permanent fortifications."