Telegram to L.Z. Mekhlis, May 9, 1942

Source: Tom 18

You are taking the strange position of an outside observer who bears no responsibility for the affairs of the Crimean Front. This is a convenient position, but it is a thoroughly rotten one. On the Crimean Front, you are not an outside observer but a responsible representative of the Stavka, answering for all the successes and failures of the Front, and obligated to correct the command's errors on the spot. You, together with the command, bear responsibility for the fact that the Front's left flank proved to be outrageously weak. If "the entire situation showed that the enemy was going to attack in the morning," and you did not take all measures to repel it, confining yourself to passive criticism, then so much the worse for you. This means that you still do not understand that you were sent to the Crimean Front not as a Goscontrol [state controller] but as a responsible representative of the Stavka.

You demand that we replace Kozlov with someone of the caliber of Hindenburg. But you must know that we do not have any Hindenburgs in reserve. Your situation in the Crimea is not complicated, and you could have managed it yourselves. If you had used ground-attack and bomber aircraft not for side tasks but against the enemy's tanks and troops, the enemy would not have broken through the front and the tanks would not have gotten through. One does not need to be a Hindenburg to understand this simple thing, having sat for two months on the Crimean Front.

Note

On the course of events in Crimea see: GKO Resolution No. 1241s of February 4, 1942. As a result of the defeat on the Kerch peninsula, Mekhlis was demoted from Army Commissar 1st Rank to corps commissar and removed from the post of head of the Main Political Directorate of the Red Army.