Kirill Afanasyevich Meretskov

On June 23, 1941, the day after Operation Barbarossa began, Meretskov was summoned to Moscow and arrested by the NKVD. The arrest was based on testimony from already-purged commanders who named him as a participant in an alleged "anti-Soviet military conspiracy." Held in Lefortovo Prison, he was interrogated by notorious investigators Vlodzimirsky, Schwartzman, Rodos, and Ivanov. He was beaten with rubber rods, and under torture by Boris Rodos, who broke one of his ribs, he signed a false confession.

Khrushchev recalled in his memoirs that before his arrest Meretskov had been "a strapping young general, very strong and impressive-looking," but after his release "he was a shadow of his former self. He had lost so much weight he could hardly speak." During his imprisonment, he confided to a comrade that NKVD officers had urinated on his head.

After two months, Meretskov wrote to Stalin from his cell asking to be sent to the front. On September 6, 1941, he was abruptly released on Stalin's oral order. Presented to Stalin in full army dress, he was immediately appointed commander of the 7th Army. His case file was destroyed in 1955 on the orders of KGB chairman Serov, leaving the full story of his ordeal unknown. In his 1968 memoirs, Meretskov addressed the episode in a single sentence: "It took me many years to understand everything that happened to me."

After his release, Meretskov commanded the 7th Separate Army from 24 September 1941, the 4th Separate Army from 9 November, and was appointed commander of the Volkhov Front on 17 December 1941. In January 1942 he began a new offensive towards Lyuban, aimed at lifting the siege of Leningrad and encircling a large number of German forces. After the Tikhvin counteroffensive the Stavka had ordered him to organise a new Volkhov Front, which he commanded until February 1944, except for May and June 1942.

The Luban advance was very slow. The German forces were dug in, reinforced and no longer overextended. By March the two Soviet armies trying to close the encirclement were less than 25 km apart but could advance no further. On 15 March the Germans counter-attacked and cut off the 2nd Shock Army; Soviet forces restored communications only by 30 March, after heavy fighting. When Meretskov reported the restored corridor to the Stavka, he omitted that it was no more than 2 km wide, under constant German air strikes and artillery bombardment, and therefore of very poor transport capacity. As a result the Stavka did not withdraw the 2nd Shock Army while that was still possible. During late April and all of May the Volkhov Front was temporarily subordinated to Lieutenant-General Khosin's Leningrad Front, and Meretskov was sent as deputy high commander to the Western Front.

By May 1942 the 2nd Shock Army suffered supply shortages and low morale. On 30 May the Germans began a second offensive and cut it off again; after part of the encircled force broke out on 5 June, the rest was systematically destroyed. About 33,000 men were taken prisoner, roughly the same number were killed, and about 10,000 broke out.

Responsibility for the defeat is assessed differently. Immediately after the battle Meretskov placed the blame on the captured 2nd Shock Army commander Andrey Vlasov, whom he himself had recommended for the post in April 1942; the claim was echoed in his post-war memoirs, and because Vlasov later collaborated with Germany, few revisited it in the Soviet era. David Glantz counters that, whatever Vlasov's later collaboration, his level of command in May and June 1942 was no different from that of most other army commanders, and that Meretskov bears some responsibility for the defeat as the front commander who planned and carried out the operation. Khosin, commander of the Leningrad Front, was removed on 8 June, reduced in rank and never given a front again. One assessment explains his deflection of blame by noting that Meretskov, arrested less than a year earlier, knew his life might be at risk if he accepted responsibility for the disaster.

In the 1942 Sinyavino phase both sides planned offensives without knowledge of the other's. The Soviet Sinyavino Offensive failed, and the 2nd Shock Army was decimated for the second time in a year, but the German forces suffered heavy casualties and cancelled Operation Northern Light. Meretskov sought further local attacks, but the Stavka categorically refused, and he received a formal critique on 15 October 1942 for his conduct of the operation. After Lyuban he remained in command of the Volkhov Front and, together with the new Leningrad Front commander Govorov, planned the offensive to break the blockade. The plan was approved by the Stavka in December 1942 as Operation Iskra. It began on 13 January 1943; Soviet forces linked up on 18 January, the front stabilised by 22 January, and a land corridor 8 to 10 km wide was opened, eliminating the possibility of the city's capture and of a German-Finnish link-up. On 28 January 1943 Meretskov and Govorov were both awarded the Order of Suvorov 1st Class.