Kliment Yefremovich Voroshilov

After Frunze's death Voroshilov headed the Soviet military department from 6 November 1925 to 20 June 1934 as People's Commissar for Military and Naval Affairs and chairman of the Revolutionary Military Council, then as People's Commissar of Defence from 1934 to 1940: almost fifteen years, longer than anyone else in the Soviet period. He became a full member of the Politburo in 1926 and a Marshal of the Soviet Union in November 1935.

Under him the Red Army was re-equipped with new tanks, aircraft and artillery. He met designers, visited factories and formed specialist commissions to test new guns, and new ranks, insignia and uniforms were introduced. The army moved from the territorial-militia system to a cadre system: by the start of 1935, 77 per cent of formations were cadre and 23 per cent territorial, and in 1939 territorial units were abolished altogether. Voroshilov himself argued that a militia system could not ensure cohesion, discipline or mastery of complex equipment. Officer training was reorganised into secondary (military school) and higher (academy) levels; by the start of 1928 the USSR had 49 military schools, 6 academies and 5 military faculties at civilian institutions. English-language accounts single out, as the main accomplishment of these years, the relocation of key war industries east of the Urals, so that the country could retreat strategically while keeping its manufacturing capacity. According to O. N. Ken's study, he advocated a balanced development of the armed forces tied to the country's economic capacity, writing in Krasnaya Zvezda that over-straining military production leads to a fall in productive forces.

Despite purging many "mechanisers" from the army, he came to hold that reliance on cavalry should decrease and modern arms receive priority, opposing Budyonny's effort to protect the cavalry's status. In his report on the 1936 summer manoeuvres, however, he acknowledged insufficient communications, ineffective staffs, poor cooperation between arms and rudimentary command structures in tank units. After the purge he and Kulik were among the instigators of reforms meant to reconcile doctrine such as deep operations with the army's real state; they proved unable to carry them through, and the reorganisation of field units he put into practice is judged to have left the army less advanced than in 1936.

The tenure also had a patronage dimension. A devoted supporter of Stalin, he backed him against Trotsky and in the consolidation of power in the late 1920s, and wrote the article and later the book "Stalin and the Red Army" glorifying Stalin's civil-war role. Russian sources also record conflicts with Stalin over China policy and over the immediate expulsion of Trotsky and Zinoviev from the Central Committee.

Kliment Voroshilov was the top military leader during the Great Purge, and he personally signed off on the destruction of the Red Army's officer corps. As People's Commissar for Defence in 1937–1938, he presided over a decapitation of the military command with his own hand.

Voroshilov's signature appears on 185 execution lists. More than 18,000 people on those lists were convicted and shot. As a Politburo member, he also approved regional execution quotas under NKVD Order No. 00447: numerical 'limits' governing how many people each region was to arrest and execute.

The most notorious instance came on 28 May 1937. When the NKVD sent the Defence Commissariat a list of 26 Red Army commanders, Voroshilov wrote directly on it: 'To Comrade Yezhov. Take all the scoundrels. 28.V.1937. K. Voroshilov.' On another list of 142 commanders, he was briefer still: 'Arrest. K. V.'

With these strokes, the Red Army's finest, Tukhachevsky, Yakir, Uborevich, were sent to their deaths. Voroshilov knew many of them personally and had served alongside them. In his later memoirs, he barely mentioned this period and never acknowledged responsibility.

When he was finally sacked after the Winter War in 1940, the officer corps he had helped annihilate left the Red Army hollowed out. It was a deficit from which it would take years to recover.

On 30 November 1939, the USSR invaded Finland. Kliment Voroshilov, as People's Commissar for Defence, was in command. His calculation was simple: Finland is small, the Red Army is invincible, and the war will be over in two weeks.

Reality was brutal. −40°C winter, Finnish guerrilla tactics, deep forests. The Red Army was massacred at the Mannerheim Line. Over 105,000 Soviet soldiers were killed or missing, against 25,000 Finnish dead. After four months, the USSR won — barely — but international prestige was shattered.

Stalin was furious. Voroshilov was sacked as Defence Commissar in May 1940. His replacement was Timoshenko, and the true heir was Zhukov. Yet Voroshilov survived: on loyalty alone. After Stalin's death in 1953, he even rose to Chairman of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet, the ceremonial head of state. The Winter War is the perfect case study of how an incompetent loyalist survives in the system.