Zhdanov's GlavPUR chief who survived the Leningrad Affair: political commissar of the postwar Red Army
As political officer for the 'Road of Life' across frozen Lake Ladoga during the siege of Leningrad, Shikin personally inspected convoys crossing the ice to ensure supplies reached the starving city.
A Zhdanov protégé who rose through the political commissar ranks, Shikin oversaw political work on the 'Road of Life' during the Siege of Leningrad and served as head of the Red Army's Main Political Directorate (GlavPUR) from 1945 to 1949, the chief political-ideological officer of the Soviet armed forces in the critical postwar transition. He succeeded Shcherbakov in the post but was swept out by the Leningrad Affair in 1949; unlike most leading Zhdanovites he escaped arrest, though he was demoted to head the Lenin Military-Political Academy. He later served in the Party-State Control Committee and was appointed Soviet ambassador to Albania in 1960, only to be recalled amid the Albanian-Soviet split.
Activities and affiliations
- 1939–1941 Military command · Soviet Union · Military and defence
Career Timeline
- 1927–1939Joins VKP(b) 1927; graduates Krupskaya Communist University (1931); works at Gorky Automobile Plant, then secretary of Avtozavodsky district party committee, Gorky
- 1939–1941Transfers to Red Army political work; head of political department, Military Electrotechnical Academy (1939); deputy head of Political Propaganda Directorate, Leningrad Military District (1940–1941)
- 1941–1942Member of Military Council, Northern Front; head of Political Directorate, Leningrad and Volkhov Fronts — responsible for political supervision of the 'Road of Life'
- 1942–1945Head of Propaganda and Agitation Directorate, deputy head of GlavPUR under Shcherbakov; directs wartime army political work
- 1945–1949Head of GlavPUR (Main Political Directorate of the Soviet Armed Forces); promoted Colonel-General Sept 1945; concurrently Member of Military Council, High Command of Soviet Forces in the Far East
- 1949–1950Dismissed in the Leningrad Affair; demoted to head of the Lenin Military-Political Academy
- 1950–1960Inspector, deputy head, 1st deputy head of CC Party Organs Department for Union Republics; member of Central Auditing Commission from 1956
- 1960–1973Soviet Ambassador to Albania (1960–1961), recalled amid Albanian-Soviet split; 1st Deputy Chairman, Party-State Control Committee (1962–1965); 1st Deputy Chairman, People's Control Committee (1965–1973)
Related historical events
Documenting Nazi Crimes on Liberated Territory, from Sobibór to Auschwitz
As head and deputy head of GlavPUR's Propaganda and Agitation Directorate from 1942 to 1945, Shikin's portfolio included documenting the Nazi crimes that the Red Army uncovered on liberated territory. He personally travelled to the front and to recently freed areas to gather evidence, work that fed into the Extraordinary State Commission (ChGK) set up by Stalin to establish and record the facts of Nazi atrocities.
In August 1944, while attached to the 1st Belorussian Front, Shikin visited the site of the liberated Sobibór extermination camp in person. On the basis of testimony from local residents he drafted a report dated 25 August 1944 to ChGK chairman Nikolai Shvernik, recording that Sobibór had been purpose-built for the mass murder of Jews, that prisoners were brought in by up to 21 railway cars a day from across Europe and from occupied Soviet territory, deceived by the pretence of work at a 'button factory' before being sent to the gas chambers. He also recommended that a ChGK member be dispatched to Sobibór to investigate and collect material on the Nazi crimes.
In the same line of work he later compiled a detailed report on Auschwitz. On that document, later scholarship has noted that the Jewish identity of the victims was omitted and that the prisoners cited as examples were non-Jews, a sign of how the Soviet state's official narrative tended to fold Nazi victims into the category of 'Soviet citizens.' Nonetheless, these reports belong to the earliest documents that fixed the facts of Sobibór and Auschwitz within the Soviet record and helped bring them to world attention. Alongside his ideological-control duties as GlavPUR chief, this documenting role was among the most enduring documentary legacies of wartime Soviet state.