Kirill Semyonovich Moskalenko

In June 1957, Georgy Zhukov played a decisive role in crushing the Molotov-Malenkov-Kaganovich 'Anti-Party Group' on Khrushchev's behalf, and was rewarded with full membership in the CPSU Presidium. Yet barely four months later, in October 1957, Khrushchev resolved to remove him, judging that Zhukov had been weakening the party's political organs within the military and harbored 'Bonapartist' ambitions.

At the October plenum, Moskalenko was one of the most aggressive accusers. He attacked Zhukov with passion, charging him with attempting to seize power through the army. Zhukov shot back from the floor: 'What are you accusing me of? You yourself told me many times: "What are you looking at? Take power into your own hands!"' Moskalenko fell silent. Khrushchev later wrote in his memoirs that he was shocked by the virulence of Moskalenko's denunciation.

The episode crystallized Moskalenko's character. In 1953 he had stood beside Zhukov to arrest Beria; four years later he led the charge to destroy Zhukov; and a few years after that, in 1962, he himself was dismissed as Commander-in-Chief of the Strategic Rocket Forces. Khrushchev called him 'a third Moskalenko, an opportunist, an unprincipled and illogical man.' In 1999, a commission under the President of the Russian Federation formally cleared Zhukov of all charges.

The Russian-language Wikipedia article on Moskalenko contains a dedicated 'Criticism' (Критика) section, showing that assessments by contemporaries were sharply divided. One detractor is General A. V. Gorbatov, who criticised Moskalenko for 'pointless, unceasing attacks on the same points for ten to fifteen days at great cost' in the defensive battles near Kharkov and, in front of Marshal S. K. Timoshenko, with Khrushchev, Bagramyan and Moskalenko himself present, pointed at Moskalenko and said: 'This is not an army commander, this is a free appendage to the army, a stringless balalaika.' Gorbatov added that divisions acted 'by their own initiative, contrary to the army commander's orders', that 'the whole of the army commander's leadership consists in the most unceremonious treatment of subordinates', and compared the abuse he heard, 'You're helping Hitler, you serve the fascists, traitor!', to what he had heard from an interrogator in Lefortovo prison. Front-line veteran, film director and screenwriter I. I. Nikolaev wrote in the documentary novella 'Генерал' that 'with a highly dubious military talent, General K. S. Moskalenko was obsequious before the Stavka and merciless to his own troops'; dealings with subordinates 'were built on a combination of insults and hysteria', he allowed divisional commanders no independence, and the result, per Gorbatov, was failure and losses 'two to three times greater than the enemy's'.

There is a countervailing assessment as well. In the award citation for Moskalenko as commander of the 38th Army, 1st Ukrainian Front commander I. S. Konev wrote that Colonel-General Moskalenko was 'a strong-willed and decisive commander' who 'works a great deal, disregarding his time and his health', was 'tactically literate', 'knows how to attack better than to defend', but 'under a complicated situation he is little stable'.

Further characterisations exist. Air Chief Marshal A. E. Golovanov recalled that 'during the war Moskalenko was called "General Panic"; Stalin said he had no face', and quoted Zhukov saying 'Alexander Yevgenievich, General Panic called me!' Writer G. N. Vladimov, who prepared the memoirs of General P. V. Sevastyanov, member of the military council of the 40th Army under Moskalenko, wrote that Moskalenko squandered his army on the Bukrin bridgehead and then switched to the Lyutezh bridgehead 'to take the 38th Army from N. E. Chibisov', on the ground, which Vladimov attributes to Moskalenko and Khrushchev, 'that the capital of Ukraine should be liberated by a Ukrainian army commander'; in Vladimov's novel 'Генерал и его армия' he is allegorised as 'General Tereshchenko'.

Khrushchev left the fullest primary characterisation in his tape-recorded memoirs of 1969, 'Время. Люди. Власть'. Moskalenko was 'devoted to the cause' and 'fought not badly', showing persistence and energy and sparing himself nothing, but he was nervous, unbalanced, hot-tempered and rude. He was notorious for insulting subordinates, and his stock lexicon toward them was 'Enemy of the people! Traitor! Scoundrel! He ought to be tried! He ought to be shot!' Khrushchev concluded that 'there exist several Moskalenkos': one who honestly commanded troops in the war's first phase and whose active role was deservedly recognised; a second who is 'a real hysteric'; and 'a third Moskalenko, an opportunist, an illogical and unprincipled man'.

In the post-Soviet decommunization period, Moskalenko's memory became the object of politics again. On 26 May 2023 the Kyiv City Council stripped the title of 'Honorary Citizen of the City of Kyiv' from Moskalenko, stating that it did so in accordance with Ukrainian decommunization laws. Separately, his April 1962 dismissal, made without any reason being given to the honorary and insignificant post of Inspector General of the Ministry of Defence, was surmised by Michel Tatu, a French journalist then based in Moscow, to be related to the Cuban Missile Crisis, reasoning that as commander-in-chief of strategic rockets Moskalenko could not have been happy at the prospect of his most secret weapons being shipped with nuclear warheads to an exposed site such as Cuba. This is Tatu's inference, not established fact.