1. Lev Zakharovich Mekhlis was a Soviet politician and a prominent officer in the Red Army from 1937 to 1942.
26 Facts About Lev Mekhlis
1. 2.
Lev Mekhlis, born in Odessa, completed six classes of Jewish commercial school.
3.
Lev Mekhlis worked as a schoolteacher from 1904 to 1911.
4.
Lev Mekhlis served in the artillery in the First World War.
5.
When Stalin ordered the forced collectivisation of Soviet farms in 1929, Lev Mekhlis helped purge the Institute of Stalin's opponents.
6.
Lev Mekhlis was the instigator of a letter published in Pravda on 30 May 1930, denouncing the influence of the right wing opposition in the Industrial Academy in Moscow.
7.
Lev Mekhlis was elected a candidate member of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union in 1934, and promoted to full membership in October 1937.
8.
In December 1937, during the Great Purge, Lev Mekhlis was confirmed as Head of the Political Administration of the Red Army, which had been vacant since the previous holder, Yan Gamarnik, had committed suicide.
9.
Lev Mekhlis's influence did the army and the country no good.
10.
Lev Mekhlis attributed the setbacks to treachery, and had the Soviet commander Alexei Vinogradov, Vinogradov's chief of staff, and the chief of the political department tried and shot in front of the troops.
11.
In June 1941, Lev Mekhlis was reassigned to his former position as head of the chief of main political administration and the deputy of the Peoples Commissar of Defense.
12.
Lev Mekhlis was with Stalin on the day the Germans invaded the USSR, at the start of Operation Barbarossa.
13.
Lev Mekhlis was named army commissar of the 1st rank, which corresponded to the title of General of the Red Army.
14.
Lev Mekhlis personally encouraged the killing of German prisoners of war, contributing to the massacre of Feodosia.
15.
In March 1942, Lev Mekhlis was sent to organise the defence of the vital Kerch peninsula on the Crimean Front, where he fell into disputes with General Dmitry Timofeyevich Kozlov.
16.
John Erickson wrote that in May 1942 at Kerch Lev Mekhlis threw away twenty-one divisions of three armies in a nightmare of confusion and mismanagement.
17.
Lev Mekhlis forbade the digging of trenches so that the offensive spirit of the soldiers would not be undermined.
18.
Lev Mekhlis moved up heavy artillery and army staffs to the very front lines, and so on.
19.
Lev Mekhlis was deeply convinced that he was doing right.
20.
On his return to Moscow, Lev Mekhlis was removed from the post of the deputy people's commissar of defense and the chief of the main political administration of the Red Army.
21.
Witnesses claim that when Lev Mekhlis came to Stalin shortly after the defeat, Stalin shouted at him and slammed a door in his face.
22.
Lev Mekhlis was demoted in rank two levels down to a corps commissar.
23.
Lev Mekhlis soon recovered from his demotion, as from December 6,1942, he was a lieutenant general, and on July 29,1944 he became a colonel general.
24.
On October 27,1950, Lev Mekhlis was discharged from office due to his health.
25.
Lev Mekhlis's ashes were interred at the Kremlin Wall Necropolis in Red Square.
26.
Lev Mekhlis was awarded four Orders of Lenin, five other orders and numerous medals.