Kirill Afanasyevich Meretskov, May 26, 1897 December 30, 1968, Soviet military strategist, Marshal of the Soviet Union. He was the first marshal to have no military experience in Tsarist Russia.
In 1897, Meretskov was born into a peasant family in the village of Nazarevo, Zalesk County, Ryazan Province. Coming from a poor family, he began working in the fields at the age of 7 and was able to complete it alone at the age of 9. As a child, he also spent several years in a rural church primary school.
In 1909, at the age of 12, Meretskov came to Moscow alone to earn a living, entered a metal factory and worked as a mechanic, where he first came into contact with the Bolsheviks and became acquainted with workers who participated in the underground organization. Meretskov also studied at night schools for local workers and participated in several workers' rallies.
In 1915, to evade the military police, Meretskov traveled from Moscow to Sudogda in Vladimir Province, where he worked in a turpentine factory. After the February Revolution of 1917, when the Tsar was overthrown, Meretskov joined the Bolsheviks and, together with several others, founded the Bolshevik Sudogda Party branch. By May, this branch had developed into the Sudogda County Committee, and Meretskov was elected party secretary.
After the outbreak of the October Revolution, Meretskov led the local uprising, and after the establishment of Soviet power, he became chairman of the Military Council of the County Soviets.
In August 1918, he officially joined the Red Army as chief of staff of the Red Guards in Sudogda County. In the Battle of Kazan, he was hit by two bullets and insisted on commanding the troops until he lost consciousness, so Meretskov received his first Order of the Red Banner. After recovering from his injuries, he entered the Academy of the General Staff Headquarters of the Workers' and Peasants' Red Army.
In May 1919, after completing his first year of study, Meretskov was sent to the 9th Division of the 14th Army in the Don region as an assistant chief of staff. In June, the 14th Division was forced to retreat to avoid being encircled due to the retreat of friendly troops, and Meretskov was wounded again during the retreat, and after recovering from his wounds, he returned to the military academy with all the first-year cadets who survived the battle.
In May 1920, Meretskov interrupted his studies again, this time he was sent to the South-Western Front. In Kharkov, where the headquarters was located, he met with the commander of the Front, Yev, and the military commissar Stalin, and then he was assigned to the famous 1st Cavalry Army, under Budyonny. Meretskov served as reconnaissance assistant to the chief of staff of the 4th Cavalry Division, and soon after he was wounded for the third time in battle, after recovering from his wounds, he was sent to Timoshenko's 6th Cavalry Division as an assistant to the chief of staff.
In August, after the South-Western Front gave up going to Warsaw to meet with Tukhachevsky of the Western Front, it turned to Lviv, and Meretskov was sent on the task of finding shallow crossings and circuitous trails in order to cross the Stri by surprise and attack. Soon after, the Western Front was defeated under Warsaw, and the Southwestern Front had to abandon the attack on Lviv and retreat, Meretskov returned to the Military Academy to continue his third-year coursework.
After graduating from the Military Academy in October 1921, Meretskov was initially recommended to become a brigade commander in the Independent Training Brigade in Petrograd, but Tukhachevsky did not agree to the appointment, believing that the 24-year-old Meretskov was still suitable for the cavalry unit. Meretskov was first assigned to the Western Military District with the task of forming a cavalry command, and then in January 1922 he was appointed chief of staff of the 1st Siberian Cavalry Division in Tomsk. The condition of this division was very poor, Meretskov's task was to reorganize, he assisted the division commander in reorganizing one regiment at a time, but whenever a regiment was reorganized and formed a combat strength, it was transferred to other units, and after 9 months, the last regiment was reorganized, but it was also transferred, and the division became an empty shell, and was finally disbanded.
After the disbandment of the cavalry division, Meretskov was transferred to the General Cadre Department of the Workers' and Peasants' Red Army. Immediately, he was sent to the General Headquarters of the Workers, Peasants, and Soldiers to supervise the work of the six local militia bureaus in the north as an inspector. After this mission, in February 1923, Meretskov was appointed assistant chief of staff of the 15th Infantry Corps of the North Caucasus Military District. In November, he was appointed Chief of Staff of the 9th Infantry Division on the Don. At this time, the Red Army was carrying out military reforms for the purpose of regularization and institutionalization, and Meretskov complied with this request by doing some work in replenishing troops, training new recruits, and strengthening equipment.
In July 1924, Meretskov was recalled to Moscow and served as head of the mobilization department of the Moscow Military District. Upon arriving at the ministry, Meretskov found that it was full of bureaucratic style, and he asked the commander Voroshilov to streamline the organs. The commander listened to Meretskov's advice, cut the staff of the organ by half, merged the mobilization department with the organization department into a new department, and appointed Meretskov as the minister. In September, Meretskov was appointed deputy chief of staff of the Moscow Military District and served as political commissar of the command.
During his tenure in the Moscow Military District, Meretskov took part in the reform of the system of local militias and the regularization of the logistics system, as well as experimented with the effect of partial mobilization. After 1925, he cooperated with the new commander of the military region and successfully completed the military reform of the military region in three years.
In 1928, Ieronim Petrovich Ubolevich (one of the four recipients of the rank of Army First Class when the Soviet Army was restored to military rank in 1935, second only to Marshal, who was executed on the same day as Tukhachevsky during the purge) became the commander of the Moscow Military District. This is a man who influenced Meretskov's life, and in his memoirs he wrote: "This man had a great influence on my life. I've been working with him for about five years, and these years have been a whole new time for me in my work. ......I was thirty-two years old when I met him. I have held a fairly high military position, and may be considered a mature man, but no military chief has been able to teach me as much as he has done before (and it may be said since). ”
Meretskov was deeply influenced by Ubolevich's comments on the exercises, his views on improving the level of training and command of tank troops in peacetime, the establishment of a tank training base, and the need to strengthen air defense. Ubolevich worked in the Moscow Military District for about a year and a half. And his work made a very strong impression on Meretskov. In Meretskov's own words: "The commander himself is constantly improving, and we are improving with it." ”
In 1930, the new commander took office, just as it was Meretskov's turn to serve as a trainee commander. In April, he was appointed commander and political commissar of the 14th Infantry Division. Soon after, in accordance with the Soviet-German Treaty of Friendship and Neutrality signed between the Soviet Union and the Weimar Republic, he was incorporated into the Red Army commander's group and went to the German General Staff for inspection and exchange. On the one hand, he observed that the German General Staff was very skilled in all aspects of its operational work, its foresight was commendable, its work was accurate, and its staff members were well organized. On the other hand, it is very conformist, and the rules stipulate to the extent that it is possible to provide determination to subordinates without hurrying, which restricts the initiative of on-the-spot work. What impressed Meretskov the most during his visit to Germany was that the German army had a very high level of mechanization.
After returning home, in February 1931, Meretskov became chief of staff of the Moscow Military District. He had a good relationship with the previous two commanders, but this time there were problems with the new commanders, and there were contradictions between the two due to differences in concepts and personalities. As they failed to agree on the same matter in front of their superiors, including Stalin, on several occasions (each spoke separately in front of the leadership), the contradictions between the two deepened to the point that they could not work together.
In April 1932, Meretskov was appointed Chief of Staff of the Belorussian Military District and returned to his old superior, Ubolevich. At that time, the Belarusian Military District was star-studded, Timoshenko was serving as a corps commander at that time, and was soon promoted to deputy commander of the military district, Zhukov, Konev, and Sokolovsky, three future marshals, were serving as division commanders, Marshal Baghramyan was the chief of staff of the army at that time, and Marshal Malinovsky was ...... in the War Department at that time
In addition to emphasizing the intensity of training, he also found that the traffic situation in the territory of the Belarusian Military District was not good, which affected the movement of troops in different regions, so Meretskov carried out a lot of work on the construction of roads for the movement of troops and the improvement of the entire communication route, but only partially completed due to insufficient financial allocation. In 1934, after a large-scale exercise, Meretskov and Malinovsky, among others, began to use the detailed rules for in-depth combat in the troops. In 1935, the Soviet army restored the military rank system, and Meretskov was awarded the rank of division.
In January 1935, Meretskov was transferred to the post of Chief of Staff of the Red Banner Far Eastern Special Army, and his stay in the Far East for more than a year had a direct impact on his leadership of the First Far Eastern Front 10 years later.
In 1936, the Spanish Civil War broke out. Meretskov and Malinovsky, as well as Pavlov (the commander of the Western Front who was later shot by Stalin) and others, joined the Soviet military advisory group and went to Spain to direct the Republican Army in combat. In November 1936, in the frontal attack of Franco's army on Madrid, Meretskov assisted in organizing the defense and helped organize the international brigade into the battlefield to repel the attack of Franco's army.
In 1937, Meretskov took over the post of military adviser to the chairman of the Madrid Defense Committee, and during the defense month of Madrid, he organized the Battle of the Hamara River and the Battle of Guadalajara, annihilating more than 6,000 enemy troops and achieving a decisive victory against the rebels.
In May 1937, Meretskov returned home and for his outstanding performance in Spain, he was awarded the Order of the Red Banner for the second time and was awarded the Order of Lenin.