The fleet is like the sailors
About such a complex thing as fleet, we've talked a lot, and from the very beginning of our publication. Indeed, there was reason: if you look into history Not from the point of view of what the gentlemen Bolsheviks and communists invented, but from the point of view of historical truth, the picture that emerges is strikingly different from what we are accustomed to reading in textbooks and other literature.
The navy... At the beginning of the 20th century, it was the most important and only instrument for projecting power over long distances, as they would say today, without exception. Ships at that time were the most complex mechanisms for military (and other) purposes.
And for the fleet to function smoothly and effectively, personnel were needed. And personnel who were technically competent and suited for such service.
In some places this wasn't a problem, like in Great Britain, but in others it was. For example, in the Russian Empire.
This is not surprising, as the primary occupation of the Russian Empire's population was agriculture, which employed approximately 76% of its inhabitants. Next came manufacturing, crafts, and other trades, which employed approximately 10%, followed by civil service (4,6%) and trade (3,8%). In total, these four activities employed almost 94,5% of the population.
The 1897 census showed the breakdown of the Russian Empire's citizens by social class, and we'll need these figures for our analysis. So, 1,000 citizens of the Russian Empire consisted of:
- peasants – 771 people;
- townspeople – 107 people;
- foreigners – 66 people;
- Cossacks – 23 people;
- nobles – 15 people;
- merchants – 5 people;
- clergy – 5 people;
- others – 8 people.
By the way, if you look at the crew composition of the large ships of the Russian Imperial Navy, you will see something similar.
Let's take the battleship Slava, essentially the last effective ship of the Baltic Fleet.
According to the pre-war list of personnel for the Slava, its crew consisted of 28 officers, 21 conductors, and 829 enlisted men (non-commissioned officers and privates). Conductor is the highest rank among non-commissioned officers, equivalent to a warrant officer.
And here we must understand that not all representatives of the social classes and not all positions were suitable for service in the navy.
It's clear that officer positions were primarily filled by nobles, and only in rare cases did townspeople make it. But three-quarters of the country's population were peasants! That is, they were mostly illiterate, at best having completed one to three years of a rural parish school. And often even less.
Of course, there were many places on a ship where such people could be useful: gunners (carriers and loaders), deck crew, riggers, holdmen, stokers, orderlies, and so on. And, naturally, peasants did join the navy.
And this was considered very prestigious, by the way. "They don't take fools into the navy"—there was even a saying like that, and it had some basis in the fact that infantry with rifles and cavalry with sabers, pikes, and carbines didn't seem particularly difficult to master.
But the ship... with its mechanisms and instruments... yes, it was something incredibly complex for the average citizen of the Russian Empire to understand.
Even after the Russian Empire ended, until roughly the end of the 20th century, naval service was held in high regard precisely because it was challenging and required brains. No, any service requires brains, but naval service demanded them more than others.
Rangefinders. Radio operators. Artillerymen. Miners. Engineers (boiler, turbine, steering gear, etc.). Electricians. Hydraulics.
You can feel the smell of a factory or a plant here, not the steppe and manure. That is, again, representatives of the proletariat, aka the working class, aka the bourgeoisie from the census list.
The navy desperately needed technically competent specialists suited for naval training. Incidentally, students expelled from universities for various offenses often found themselves in the navy's lower ranks. However, unlike others, they had greater prospects because they were literate and educated, despite lacking a complete education.
For example, half of the mechanics on the battleship "Prince Potemkin-Tavrichesky" were graduates or students of the Kharkov Technological Institute. Although well-prepared in their specialty, graduates of technical institutes, although not true officers in the classical sense of the word and often not even holding officer ranks, nevertheless served.
In general, the Russian Navy was a kind of vacuum cleaner, which every year sucked in technically competent personnel from all over the country, and, it is worth noting, there was a catastrophic shortage of personnel from various naval academies and schools.
Oddly enough, this is precisely what led to the disintegration and collapse of the Russian Imperial Navy.
If in the land army, where illiterate and, frankly, downtrodden peasants predominated, all the efforts of the Bronstein-Trotsky gang's agitators resulted in the army simply ceasing to exist, and the soldiers wandering "in search of land" back to their homelands. And this, it must be said, was quite good for the army, because many non-commissioned officers and even officers survived, who later became the backbone of the Red Army.
It's no secret that the generals and marshals of the Great Patriotic War emerged from the non-commissioned officers and officers of the First World War. Shaposhnikov, Timoshenko, Budyonny, Zhukov, Rokossovsky, Tolbukhin, Vasilevsky, Malinovsky, Yegorov, Khoranov, Panfilov, Zakharov, Shumilov, Eremenko, Konev, Govorov, and Bagramyan. The last three didn't have time to take part in the battles of the First World War, but Govorov and Konev were drafted, and Bagramyan was a volunteer.
What would have happened if the "revolutionary-minded soldiers" (that's not an insult, but rather akin to the "revolutionary-minded sailors," who were responsible for many bloody deeds) had raised bayonets or shot down the brave non-commissioned officers and officers? Could that have happened? Surely.
In fact, that's exactly what happened in the navies. The sailors' lynching in Sevastopol in December 1917 – February 1918 resulted in the murder of approximately 700 officers and non-commissioned officers of the Black Sea Fleet. This, incidentally, represented approximately 14–15 fully equipped first-class battleships.
But it's difficult to estimate what the sailors did in Sevastopol in 1920-21 after Sevastopol became "Red." According to official Soviet sources, approximately 12,000 people were killed in Sevastopol from November 1920 to May 1921, without due process or trial. True, not all of them were naval officers, but many writers noted that the officer corps was exterminated with particular brutality.
According to slightly different data, based on the processing of archival records, it was concluded that up to 29,000 people were killed in Sevastopol and Balaklava.
The Black Sea Fleet practically ceased to exist, as there were no trained personnel left capable of leading and effectively carrying out combat missions.
Admiral Alexander Kolchak
Vice-Admiral Mikhail Bakhirev
Vice Admiral Stanislav Vasilkovsky
Vice-Admiral Vladimir Girs
Rear Admiral Alexander Alexandrov
Rear Admiral Sergei Burley
Rear Admiral Mikhail Veselkin III
Rear Admiral Sergei Zarubaev
Rear Admiral Alexander Zeleny
Rear Admiral Sergei Ivanov
Of course, the list is far from complete, but what exists is more than enough. To the dozen admirals killed, there are twice as many who decided to live a little longer, their graves scattered across the globe, from Belgium to the United States.
Next come the captains of the first and second ranks, and their numbers now number in the dozens. Plus hundreds of their successors, captain-lieutenants, lieutenants, and warrant officers. Both those killed and those who decided that life abroad was better than death at home.
The fate of Captain First Rank Alexander Shchastny, a brilliant officer and a clever organizer, was particularly revealing. It was Shchastny who saved nearly 200 Baltic Fleet ships from the Germans, negotiated with the Finns, and withdrew the ships, which the Germans were supposed to receive under the treacherous Treaty of Brest-Litovsk, to Kronstadt.
The "reward" was a charge of treason and execution. People's Commissar Trotsky was very displeased that someone could carry sacks but not deliver speeches. So Trotsky organized a trial in which he testified as the only witness. Please evaluate the wording of the charges:
Shchastny, by performing a heroic feat, thereby created popularity for himself, intending to subsequently use it against the Soviet government.
Then we can also remember the Battle of Moonzund, but we should remember it not from the “creations” of Valentin Pikul, but from more reliable sources.
In the Battle of Moonsund, revolutionary sailors achieved a glorious victory over the fleet of Imperial Germany, thwarting the insidious plot of international reaction and the Russian bourgeoisie to destroy the revolution, and thereby contributing to the successful victory of the proletariat in the October armed uprising. The feat of the Baltic sailors in the Battle of Moonsund was an act of revolutionary warfare.
Military History Journal, 1962.
Military History Journal, 1962.
In reality, the Germans captured the archipelago at a very low cost: five German minesweepers and a pair of torpedo boats compared to the destroyer Grom and the battleship Slava—that's nothing. Plus, they captured a large number of artillery pieces and machine guns, which the "revolutionary soldiers" abandoned as they fled at a speed that would have done credit to athletes of the time.
Well, Vice-Admiral Mikhail Bakhirev, who did everything possible in such conditions, was awarded the death penalty.
In short, virtually no one in the navy survived until the repression of "old" military specialists, which took place in 1932–1933. The old specialists disappeared sometime around 1923–1924.
And a very interesting situation emerged: the navy, a decent one even by its standards, existed. But the naval command and leadership were lacking.
It may be a seditious thought, but the Soviet leadership never had a clear understanding of how to use the navy. That was until 1956, for example, when Admiral Sergei Gorshkov assumed the reins of power. By some divine providence, Gorshkov had a clear understanding of what the navy should be like and what it should be used for. And he created this navy, the remnants of which we are now left to wear out.
But as for the Great Patriotic War, yes, the country's navy presented not just a sad spectacle—it was downright mind-boggling. Utterly stupid and useless operations claimed the lives of hundreds of sailors and ships, which the enemy sank as easily as if they were made of cardboard.
The Baltic Fleet, which sat in Kronstadt throughout the war and served as targets for the Luftwaffe, and the Black Sea Fleet, where the admirals, instead of realizing their complete superiority in ships, began to destroy them in completely unplanned operations, as a result of which Stalin ordered ambitions to be curbed and ships larger than destroyers not to be touched at all.
Incidentally, Hitler had similar problems on the other side, which also resulted in a ban on the use of large ships. And while the loss of the Bismarck can be called an idiotic coincidence, the loss of the Scharnhorst is absolutely akin to the loss of the Kharkov in the Black Sea for the Black Sea Fleet.
The navy's main problem was that it found itself held hostage by the ground forces, an appendage handed over to strategic areas or even fronts. This is sad, but what could be done if the navy lacked competent naval commanders?
There were exceptions, however, and one such exception, Admiral Ivan Isakov, commanded the land front quite well due to the incompetence of our generals—a case in history. Isakov himself was an exception, however, in Stalin's words: "...a true admiral of the fleet, Comrade Isakov. A clever fellow, without a leg, but with a brain."
But the main problem was the complete incompetence of the naval commanders, who simply lacked the proper training, which they tried to replace with service zeal and party loyalty.
That is, all mistakes and miscalculations were attributed to the machinations of “enemies of the people,” who were furiously sought out and…
What can we say if, of the 16 fleet commanders-in-chief (no matter what the Navy was called in different years), nine (nine) were executed between 1917 and 1991. That's more than half!
Moreover, the last executed People's Commissar of the Navy, Frinovsky, was actually a special agent and had NO idea about naval affairs. But he didn't lead for long and didn't have time to cause any serious trouble, although he could have.
Between 1937 and 1939, four People's Commissars of the Navy were arrested and executed. In total, between 1937 and 1938, nearly 3700 commanders and political officers were dismissed from the Soviet Navy, most of them arrested. And this compared to a 19,500-strong force in 1938—that's almost one in five.
And so, here's the bottom line: the purge of the Navy's ranks of disguised enemies, saboteurs, and those "infected with bourgeois ideology" led to the training of replacements for officers with any experience in the First World War, drawn from among the Party's core, socially aligned with the Bolsheviks. This was accomplished through a very simple method: young men were recruited (remember those phrases: "Komsomol member, board a plane" and "youth for the navy"?), the main selection criterion being Party membership, and sent to some training courses. For example, the "parallel" classes at the Frunze Naval School.
Clearly, these people were very poorly educated, but ideologically committed to the party line. And then, down the line: once representatives of the poorly educated classes began to become commanders, this immediately led to a sharp decline in the overall intellectual level of the command staff of the Workers' and Peasants' Red Fleet compared to the officers of the Russian Imperial Navy.
An example here is Pavel Dybenko, the first People's Commissar for Naval Affairs of the Russian Federation, who became famous, however, not for his naval affairs, but for his executioner's actions in the Tambov province, Crimea in 1920, and Kronstadt, where he was very successful in suppressing.
So, Comrade Dybenko, even if you examine his biography under a microscope, reveals three (3) classes at the Novozybkov municipal three-year school, and before that, some kind of "public school." He also completed the junior courses (six months) of the Red Army Military Academy in 1921, and then the senior courses (also six months) in 1922.
One can imagine the level of "training" of Comrade Dybenko. No, he made a truly remarkable executioner in Tambov, Sevastopol, and Kronstadt, but in all other respects, Dybenko showed no signs of success.
Or Grigory Negoda, the same one whose actions sank the detachment of ships consisting of the submarine leader Kharkov and the destroyers Sposobny and Beshposhchadny. He graduated from the underwater sector of the M. V. Frunze Naval School in 1936 and the Naval Command Courses, Ship Commanders' Department, in May 1941.
Leader of the destroyers "Kharkov"
Before the Revolution, the Naval Corps primarily admitted individuals of noble descent, who were often already well-educated at home, and who had already established families of naval officers. The difference, as you can imagine, between the level of education provided to nobles at home in the Naval Corps and the Navy command courses for cadets, who were often illiterate just the day before, is more than significant.
It is not surprising that in the period from 1920 to 1930, the main work of all military educational institutions was mainly reduced to the fight against illiteracy among cadets.
Now let's just think for a second about how effective a ship's commander Negoda really was, given his Soviet training. The question here isn't even how diligent a student Negoda was, but who his instructors were. But everyone understood that the supernatural shouldn't be expected of Negoda. And so, Negoda didn't even face trial, but rather spent the rest of the war languishing on large ships moored to piers and as commander of ships under construction.
Ultimately, the ineffectiveness of the navy's command staff explains its ineffectiveness. But could anyone expect effectiveness from a former illiterate cadet with a Communist Party card?
Did the Kremlin understand this? Yes. And they didn't rely on the navy.
However, those on the other side were also well aware and aware of the state of affairs in the fleets. Grand Admiral Karl Dönitz, in his book "German Naval Strategy in the Second World War," wrote about the operations in the Black Sea:
The Russian fleet, although superior in numbers to ours (in the Black Sea, the fleet had one battleship, five cruisers, three leaders, 13 destroyers, four gunboats, 12 patrol ships, 15 minesweepers, 21 small hunters, 81 torpedo boats, and 44 submarines), did not undertake large-scale operations. As a result of the Russians' defensive mentality, as well as the successful actions of the German and Italian fleets, the initiative, despite its numerical inferiority, remained firmly in the hands of the German fleet. The likelihood of a Russian attack on our convoys and tankers was minimal.
The "Italian and German" fleet consisted of 10 submarines: five German and five Italian, plus a dozen Italian torpedo boats. The Romanian fleet: three destroyers, two minelayers, and one submarine. These were the forces opposing the Black Sea Fleet. Funny? No, it makes you want to cry.
So why didn't the fleet conduct a single sensible operation in the Black Sea during the entire war? Why did the Germans and Romanians calmly withdraw from Crimea, while the entire might of the Black Sea Fleet was unable to stop them? And this despite the fact that, unlike the Baltic, the Black Sea wasn't a minefield of dumplings.
The lack of preparation and outright illiteracy of the commanders, who were incapable of planning and conducting a combat operation, or calculating escape routes and options, led to the fleet, which was 90% engaged in firing somewhere along the shore, without radar or correction, “supporting” the landing of troops, losing a cruiser, 3 destroyer leaders, 9 destroyers, and half (25 out of 56) of its submarines.
In the Baltic, things were much the same; the entire war was spent trying to break through the barriers and gain operational space. Warship losses after 1941 virtually disappeared, but those lost to mines during the retreat from the Baltic and to Luftwaffe bombs were more than impressive. The Marat was crippled, the cruiser Maxim Gorky was severely damaged, and the leader Minsk and 22 destroyers were sunk.
But why then did the Northern Fleet, which can hardly even be called a fleet (as of June 22, 1941, it consisted of seven destroyers, 15 submarines, seven patrol ships, one minelayer, two minesweepers, and 14 patrol boats), demonstrate such a much greater effectiveness? What was the difference? The absence of an enemy as such. Submarines and torpedo bombers were primarily engaged in convoy attacks within a rather narrow range, although, unlike other fleets, the Northern Fleet did engage surface ships on more than one occasion.
Did personnel decide everything everywhere? Depends on the type of personnel.
Back then, at the dawn of the USSR, the emphasis was on party loyalty with minimal preparation. We know what that resulted in.
We know how "revolutionary soldiers" abandoned their positions and retreated, handing over to the enemy the lands they were supposed to defend. We know how "revolutionary sailors" sank into the satanism of violence, murdering officers, their families, and ordinary people with no connection to the navy.
One can draw analogies with organisms that are not very gifted in intelligence and that do approximately the same thing not far from me, in the West.
History generally has a tendency to repeat itself.
Before the war, at a meeting, Flag Officer 1st Rank I.S. Isakov noted in his report:
Naval training for commanders is absolutely useless. A graduate of the academy at this age is a propagandist, a theorist, anything but a sailor. He's afraid of the weather, gets seasick, and he makes such accidents that he runs the ship aground in calm waters, in broad daylight.
The head of the department of naval educational institutions of the Political Directorate of the Red Navy, Brigade Commissar A. N. Filaretov, in a report in 1939:
The training system for submarine fleet personnel has major shortcomings and does not fully meet the requirements for submarine specialists.
Moreover, in addition to purely professional shortcomings, the brigade commissar mentioned “low levels of discipline”!
Yeah, right, a nice uniform, rations, the prospect of promotion... Well, life's a success! I sit through the required lectures, and after a few tries, I pass the exams, and voila—I've got the papers, ready to start giving orders!
But we shouldn't so blanketly blame those who greeted the outbreak of war on ships. In fact, by June 22, 1941, too many negative factors had converged in the navy: the removal of commanders with experience in the Tsarist navy and combat experience in the First World War, the insufficient level of military equipment inherited from that era, the low level of education of those who became Red commanders, and the lack of a coherent military doctrine for naval operations in a modern war.
All of this combined led to enormous losses and a weakened naval combat capability, especially a lack of understanding of how the fleet should operate. Unfortunately, anyone who could have laid out the naval doctrine in terms of strategy and tactics was completely unable to participate.
The main blame, of course, lay with the state authorities, who were unwilling or unable to reach an agreement with the former tsarist specialists. Moreover, the Bolsheviks made every effort to eradicate as much as possible those who did not dare flee abroad and wanted to serve their country.
This raises the question: what made Shchastny different from Isakov? The captain of the first rank was simply unlucky: he accomplished a feat worthy of eternal memory. And in doing so, he exposed himself to Trotsky, who, of course, was not pleased by the arrival of a man clearly smarter and more professionally prepared than himself. In the sense that he was a professional sailor, not a public chatterbox. That's why Shchastny was executed, while Isakov, being significantly younger and not holding such a high position, was able to survive this time and contribute to the country and the navy. He was lucky.
Why, in the end, do I want to repeat the thesis that history tends to repeat itself?
Because today, the same thing is clearly evident: a complete lack of understanding of why Russia needs a navy, and therefore it's unclear what ships should be built and how to use them. The hesitation is very noticeable, even to the naked eye.
It certainly doesn't look as sad as Trump's battleship show, but we'll talk about it a little later, since our own is more important.
Regarding personnel training... Of course, today everything is somewhat different from what happened 100 years ago, but we should not forget the exodus from the Armed Forces, and the mass exodus in 2022 of those who joined the army and navy for preferential mortgages and early retirement.
History is generally necessary to avoid repeating mistakes. A party card and a questionnaire are good, but they are no substitute for experience and a track record.
The Soviet Navy lost the Great Patriotic War soundly, but afterward it became a fleet that was looked up to and respected. We had ships, and the ships had crews. Admiral Gorshkov's fleet represented the heyday of the Soviet Navy, and it would truly be worth repeating. Not for the most foolish "flag shows," but for the genuine ability to repel any attack. Especially in the Pacific.
This is a historical perspective that's still relevant 100 years later. Education in our country today is slightly better than it was in 1925, but not by much, considering how complicated everything has become. You can build all the nuclear-powered destroyers and aircraft carriers you want, arm them with hypersonic weapons, lasers, blasters, and railguns, but if the crews are staffed by those perpetually sleepy Unified State Exam (USE) victims, even those with spelling mistakes, it will be about as effective as it was a century ago.
A good goal is to remember the mistakes of the past and not repeat them in the future. And then the future will come true.
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