Georgy Zhukov: General Of The Red Army And Hero Of The Soviet Unio Biography of Georgy Zhukovn,Georgy Zhukov

                                               

                           Biography  of  Georgy Zhukov

 Georgy Zhukov was born into extreme poverty,but ended up as the commanding general in charge of the entire red army during WorldWar II -- today, he is still considered by many in Russia to be the greatest militarymind in their entire history. He Came From Humble Beginnings, Born To APoor Family Georgy Zhukov was born in 1896 to an incrediblypoor peasant family in the Kaluga Province, roughly 80 miles from Moscow. His family had a small house in the relativelypoor town of Strelkovka, which Zhukov was quoted once as saying “looked the worstin the village”. His family was rather tough when it came todiscipline, and floggings with a belt by his father Konstantin, were quite common in orderto whip his boy into the shape he wanted. However, young Georgy was not one to complainabout things. He felt that a hard life at a young age, wasone of the best teachers possible -- and a hard life he certainly had.

He had one older sister, named Maria, butalmost grew up with a younger brother as well. Unfortunately, his brother Alexei did notlive past a year, and his mother Ustin’ya, was absolutely heartbroken. Then, at the tender age of nine, his lifechanged drastically. In order to provide for his future, and probablyalso to have one less mouth to feed, his family sent him off to work for his uncle Mikhailin Moscow as an apprentice furrier. While it was still a pretty harsh life, andbeatings were common if he didn’t do what he was supposed to, he was still in a muchbetter position relatively than he had been in before. He wasn’t quite as poor, he was exposedto Moscow society, and had a lot more education than he would have had otherwise. In the year 1920, Zhukov had his first marriage,to a woman named Alexandra Dievna Zuikova, who he would eventually have two daughterswith, named Era and Ella. However, Zhukov was not entirely faithfulto his wife. During his first marriage, in the early years,he had an affair with a young woman named Maria Volkhova, who he had met while laidup in the hospital, while in the army during World War I. They had an illegitimate child together namedMargarita, but this didn’t seem to have any real effect on Zhukov’s reputation atthe time, or at any point in his career.

In fact, later on in life, he divorced andremarried to a woman named Galina Alexandrovna Semyonova, who had a daughter with him thatthey named Maria -- his fourth and last child. Georgy Zhukov was actually doing quite wellas a young man recently into adulthood working as a furrier with a few young men under him,but then World War I broke out, and Russia needed able bodied men to come to the defenseof their country. Georgy Zhukov was conscripted into the army-- although no account says he had any complaints about being drafted --- and quickly foundhimself in an advanced training program. Likely because he was a little bit more educatedthan most, he got to start out training as cavalry and quickly rose up the ranks to corporal. During World War I, he managed to earn TheCross of St. George twice -- a Russian military honor awarded for bravery from lower rankingor noncommissioned officers. One award was for his capture of a Germansoldier, and another was for taking a grenade explosion that left him in the hospital formost of the rest of the war. Because he was in fact taken out of the warso early due to injury, he never really felt that his part in it was very significant. Georgy Zhukov, after going through so muchpoverty in his early life, had never been a fan of the tsars or the old political system,so when things started shaking up in Russia, he found himself fighting the old system.

When the tsar Nicholas II abdicated, thingswere in chaos and a provisional government took over. Georgy and the soldiers working with him decidedto refuse to obey this new government, and were soon branded as deserters and ended upon the run. However, once the Bolsheviks seized power,Zhukov was once again able to leave the shadows and join up with them as a soldier. After several years of participating in moppingup actions against various rebel factions, he decided to join the communist party inorder to further his career. His steady hand as a commander, as well ashis background of poverty, made him a great asset for the new regime and his star continuedto rise. As he rose up the ranks in the military, hebecame more well known, but his most decisive early action was a situation people aren’tas aware of about World War II, in which two years before the Germans actually declaredwar on the Soviet Union, the Russians had already had their hands full with the Japanese.

The Japanese had been adventuring into Russianterritory for some decades, and the Russians had been struggling to push them back out-- the Japanese even reached so close they could almost disrupt the crucial Trans-Siberianrailway. The Japanese wanted more land, and more oil,and at the time, they saw expansion into Russia as the best option to achieve their goals. The Japanese had been having border clashesat Russian allied territory -- basically trying to sneak through their weakest point -- foralmost a year, when Zhukov, who had been given command of Soviet forces, finally readiedfor his full on offensive where the Japanese had amassed at the Khalkhin Gol River. He amassed over 200 artillery pieces, over500 planes and almost 500 tanks. He had the greatest armored offensive in knownhuman history, and in one big push, started barraging the Japanese position first withbombers, then artillery barrage and then tanks, finally encircling the enemy to the pointthat almost none escaped. This secured Georgy Zhukov’s reputationas a great leader, able to move incredible amounts of new armored units effectively andearned him special attention from Soviet high command. Career In World War II -- His Elevation ToThe Highest Of Command Positions There are some people who argue that Zhukovexaggerated his role in the battle of Khalkhin Gol and other battles as well, in order toaggrandize himself, and that he got away with it because the Soviet Union wanted a standardbearer, and because he managed to get along well with Stalin.

One researcher named Suvorov, who has writtencritically of Zhukov, claims that the real credit for the strategy at the battle of KhalkhinGol should have gone to his chief of staff, a brigade commander named M.A Bogdanov, whowas often considered to be the greatest leader that the Soviet Union had at the time. He also laments that most of the first officersor other lesser leaders involved, seemed to still be classified, as if the Soviet Unionwanted all credit to go to Zhukov. However, apart from the fact that M.A. Bogdanovwas a great leader at the time, there is no reason to believe Zhukov didn’t plan ormake his own decisions in the battle -- he was the acting commander, after all. Despite criticisms and claims of proper credit,he became Stalin’s favorite general, and despite occasional disagreements, he quicklybecame Stalin’s quasi-official second in command for the rest of the war. Now, there were of course some major faultsthat Zhukov had as a military leader. Mainly, he could often be seen getting veryangry, using lots of foul language and being abusive with people. However, this was not entirely uncommon fora lot of military leaders of the day, and there is reason to believe that his men respectedhim, because he actually valued their lives. One thing many people like to talk about inthe Soviet Union is the casual disregard they had for the lives of their soldiers -- suchas throwing massed infantry at fortified positions with no proper strategy and as commander ofSoviet forces, he gets a lot of the blame for this.

 However, at one point, he criticized thesetactics and called them criminal, to throw lives away in such a way, and in another writing,he was a bit less critical sounding, but pointed out that skill and tactics would win wars,not throwing the “people’s meat” at the enemy. General Zhukov became very close to JosephStalin over the course of World War II -- at least as close as you can get to a brutaldictator -- and he gained a certain respect for him. While Zhukov may have been more critical ofStalin’s influence and style of leadership in his later life and memoirs, at the time,he had nothing but good things to say, and seem to be at least mostly enamored by Stalin’sgrowing cult of personality. Over the course of roughly 120 in person meetings,he got to know the man and felt that he had a good measure of him. Some people thought that Stalin could be tooangry, or moody, but Zhukov seemed to prefer this. He felt that Stalin’s show of anger, frustration,or other emotions were just an example of him being exactly the straight shooter thatZhukov wanted to work with. He also felt that when not moody, Stalin wasvery analytical, and was always willing to listen to all viewpoints, or hear an argumentagainst his own ideas in order to better understand the situation. In fact, Zhukov knew Stalin so well, thathe was said to be able to gauge his moods, and thus how to react, by how Stalin handledhis smoking pipe.

 If Stalin was slowly taking long, luxuriousdrags from his pipe, it usually meant he was in a particularly good mood. However, if he didn’t refill his pipe andget it going again quickly when it was out, it could mean he was about to get very, veryangry. Zhukov used these signs to help him know howto talk to Stalin, even when he was in a very bad mood. At the battle for Berlin, General Zhukov wasin charge of the 1st Belorussian front, and urged his men to exact a terrible vengeanceon the Germans. They were entirely successful both in finallydefeating the Germans, but also in terms of vengeance. As the Russian front moved into Germany fromthe East, they brought terror upon civilians wherever they went, with looting and rapesbeing especially common. After the Battle of Berlin, General Zhukovwas given the honor of presiding over the Soviet Victory Parade in Moscow in 1945, whichhe happily took part in, before being sent back to preside as the commander in chargeof Soviet occupied Germany.

Zhukov was quickly using his post as militarygovernor to become good friends with other world leaders like Eisenhower, and increasehis influence abroad by doing a really good job of taking care of civilians in the aftermathof World War II in Germany. Stalin quickly became paranoid that Zhukovcould become a political or military threat to him, and removed him from his post, bringhim back home to face charges of disloyalty. Stalin was a military commander himself, butfrom a day before mechanized warfare. Even though Zhukov was no real threat, ashe never had the political chops of Stalin, he was seen as a threat, because he had anunderstanding of mechanized warfare, and a certain popularity with the military, thatStalin would always be jealous of. His Career After The War Was Fraught WithGreater Peril Than Guns And Blades When Stalin started to fear General Zhukovat the end of the war, he decided to make an example of him, but not too big of one. Considering his popularity, Stalin did notthink it wise to kill, arrest or punish him too harshly, but he wanted to put him firmlyin his place. Upon his return to Moscow, he was raked overthe coals and privately accused of disloyalty to the party.

 In order to take away his ability to potentiallytake over the government, his position as commander in chief of military forces wastaken away, and he was sent off to a secondary position in Odessa, a much smaller commandfar from Moscow, where he suffered his first heart attack. Not long after he found himself back in Moscowfor a time, but Lavrenty Beria, Stalin’s radically loyal security chief, was tryingto find a way to destroy him. Beria never trusted a man with so much militarypower, and believed he could be a dangerous threat to the cult of Stalin. Beria finally searched Zhukov’s apartmentin 1948 and found a huge trove of treasures that Zhukov had taken back from Soviet occupiedGermany without telling anyone. Despite his popularity, it was a big hit tohis reputation, and Zhukov was forced to publicly apologize, before finding himself being sentto an even more insulting, and pathetic position, in the Urals District. While Zhukov’s life may have taken quitea bad turn after the war, it could have been worse. Beria likely would have had him arrested orexecuted if he could, but Stalin was not really interested in going that far against Zhukov,whether for personal, or politically pragmatic reasons. Lavrenty Beria was one of Stalin’s mostradical followers, so when Stalin died in 1953, many of the top leaders of the SovietUnion were struggling to decide who would be the one in power, and a small group ofconspirators worked together to overthrow the last of Stalin’s main influence. In order to destroy Beria, Malenkov, Molotovand Kruschev met with Zhukov and hatched a plan to arrest him.

There would be a major party meeting withmany high profile members, and at the right moment, Zhukov would come in with a few militaryofficers and arrest Beria. The arrest went off without any hitch at all,and Beria was taken away to be accused formally of terrorism and counter revolutionary activities,judged officially and shot for his crimes. Zhukov likely placed a large portion, if notall of the blame, for the horrible positions he had been increasingly relegated to afterStalin’s death, as well as the horrific embarrassment of the trophy affair, on theshoulders of Beria. While Zhukov did like to think he was gettingrid of the influence of the cult of Stalin, and likely told himself that was part of hisjustification, he must have certainly got a lot of personal satisfaction out of theman's destruction -- he even once said arresting Beria was the greatest thing he had done inhis life. While all his looting from the trophy affairwasn’t exactly a great thing to do, it is understandable for him to harbor resentmentat having his loot taken away and being forced to apologize for it, as that kind of lootingwas quite common among the Soviet leadership after World War II. After the death of Stalin and the arrest ofBeria, leading to the end of Stalin’s cult of personality, Zhukov soon found himselfappointed as Minister of Defense under Nikolai Bulganin. During these years, he tried to foster peacebetween the United States, the Soviet Union and the rest of the world, being reluctantto take military action unless absolutely necessary.

This partly stemmed from long conversationsthat he had had with Dwight D. Eisenhower, with whom he had struck up a friendship yearspreviously. At the end of World War II, Zhukov took Eisenhoweron a tour of the Soviet Union, and Eisenhower even invited Zhukov to America -- althoughhe was not allowed to go on such a tour. The two of them talked a lot, and even correspondedthrough letters for years later. After meeting with Zhukov and getting to knowhim so well, Eisenhower actually believed that true and lasting peace with the SovietUnion was entirely possible and he hoped that his relationship with Zhukov, and Zhukov’sinfluence in government and with the Russian people, would help make that happen. Unfortunately, Zhukov was such a reformist,and continued to take power to himself in such a way, that those in charge became increasinglyworried of him. When Zhukov wrote extremely critically ofthe cult of Stalin, denouncing the way government used to be run under the old dictator, wilyold Kruschev used Zhukov’s statements and popularity to institute real reforms withhimself as the head, but he became even more worried about Zhukov.

The former general, and now Minister of Defense,was asking soldiers to go to him first before any of the politicians, and Khrushchev hadhim removed as Minister of Defense in 1958, for fear of him being a bonapartist. After how badly Napoleon had thrashed themrelatively recently in their history, the Russians feared a leader who would take overfrom within the military, and run the country by military dictate. Politicians like Khrushchev believed thatZhukov was loyal, and loved to use the popularity that he had with the people, but they foundthose same traits dangerous to their continued political rule of the country. End Of Life and Legacy Unfortunately, Georgy Zhukov had a historyof being used by politicians to achieve their own ends, and then thrown aside later. It is hard to say if this kept happening simplybecause Zhukov was hoping to gain more political power, but simply did not have the politicalskills, or whether he knew he was unlikely to gain any real power, but simply did whathe thought was best for the country at the time. Regardless, it would likely be quite a differentworld if Zhukov had the political skills to truly advance in the power structure thatemerged in the Soviet Union after World War II.

 If he were to have taken control, his relationshipwith Eisenhower might have helped bridge the divide among the two countries, and historymight have turned out very, very differently. However, things were not all bad with Khrushchevin control. Until the end of his premiership in 1964,Khrushchev was a tireless reformer, who got rid of a lot of the repressive Stalinist policiesand tried to bring more art and creativity back to the country again. When Leonid Brezhnev came to power in 1964,he saw Zhukov, as so many had before him, as someone he could use. While Zhukov had been largely ignored underKhrushchev, it was under the premiership of Brezhnev that he was allowed to publish hismemoirs -- after properly groveling to the latest leader of the country -- and had hispublic image greatly rehabilitated by Brezhnev, in order to shore up his own popularity. While Brezhnev used Zhukov for his popularity,he did not trust him in politics after all the accusations of Bonapartism over the years,and apart from writing his memoirs, Zhukov would remain retired for the rest of his remainingyears. When Georgy Zhukov retired, his thoughts wentto writing his memoirs and he started working on Reminiscences and Reflections. He also spent a lot of time just relaxing,hunting, and socializing with people he used to know. As he wrote his memoirs, however, his healthcontinued to steadily decline.

His bouts with heart disease earlier in lifewere a sign of things to come, and in 1967, Zhukov had another heart attack that hit himso hard, it took away the use of the left side of his body for his remaining years. During his struggle with heart disease, hiswife Galina was attending to him and trying to help him get his memoirs finished. Finally, in 1969, they were completed, passedthe censors and published, becoming the most popular account of the war from the Sovietperspective, and selling millions of copies around the world. Fan letters and suggestions poured into Zhukov’smailbox, in the tens of thousands, wishing him well and praising him for all of his loyallife’s work. Unfortunately for Zhukov, this resurgenceof his old popularity was not to be enjoyed for long. In 1973, his second wife Galina passed away,and Zhukov was left entirely alone. His memoirs were published, his life’s workwas done. His children were accounted for and his wifewas gone. Without her physical and emotional support,and with years of heart disease building up, he didn’t outlast her by long. In 1974, a final heart attack took him andthe Soviet Union lost their greatest military hero of the age. When Zhukov died, he was given a state funeralled by Leonid Brezhnev, who had his ashes laid to rest in honor at the Kremlin Wall. Zhukov’s legacy will always enjoy some controversy,but there is no doubt that he was one of the greatest military minds of World War II, andone of the greatest men of the Soviet Union.