A. V. Krulev

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A. V. Krulev

#1

Post by Der Alte Fritz » 14 Jan 2013, 10:28

A decent biography of the Deputy People's Commisar for Defense Logistics please

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Re: A. V. Krulev

#2

Post by Der Alte Fritz » 15 Jan 2013, 23:02

KRULEV, Andrey (1892 - 1962)

Born September 30, 1892 into a poor peasant family in the village of Bolshaya Oleksandrivka St Petersburg province (now Kingisepp district, Leningrad region).

Emprisoned for 6 months then deported to Estonia in 1912 for bolchevic activities. Red squad leader during the 1917 revolution. Became an active member of the communist party in 1918 holding various positions of authority including party administrative and military functions. In December 1928, became deputy chief of the political management of the Moscow Military District.
In July 1930, Krulev was appointed chief of the Central Military and Financial Management Office of the Working-Peasant Red Army on Military and Maritime Affairs, managing all the financial activities, districts and fleets. Within three years, he brought real order into the service.

In November 1935 he was awarded the rank of corps Commissioner. In this position Krulev stayed until August 1936 as chief of the Central Military and financial management of the Red Army, he did much to strengthen the financial discipline in the army and navy. In August 1936 he was appointed as the Chief of the Construction and Housing Management Office for Defense of the USSR, and in May 1938 - Head of the Military Construction, Kiev Special Military District. A year later, his administration had been recognized among the best in the USSR.

He brought to light the great shortcomings of the supply system during the Russo-Finnish war and when the post of superintendent of armies was created, he was given the post, promoted to lieutenant-general and shortly afterwards his incredible work earned him the Order of Lenin. His improvement of Soviet logistics in WW2 was remarkable.

During his 40 years of service, Army General Andrei V. Krulev was awarded two Orders of Lenin, four Orders of the Red Banner, two Orders of Suvorov 1st class and many foreign orders. On 6 July 1964, the Council of Ministers of the USSR renamed the military financial school after Army General AV Krulev.

see: http://gmic.co.uk/index.php/topic/34853 ... al-krulev/


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Re: A. V. Krulev

#3

Post by Der Alte Fritz » 16 Jan 2013, 01:52

In August 1941 made Deputy Peoples Commissar for Defence, Commander Red Army Rear Services Organisation, Commissar for Railway Communications. On other words he ran the entire supply effort for the Red Army from then until the end of the War. (VIZh)

He was even sent to Leningrad to sort out Mehklis and his supply problems. (Glantz)

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Re: A. V. Krulev

#4

Post by Der Alte Fritz » 16 Jan 2013, 01:57

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Re: A. V. Krulev

#5

Post by Der Alte Fritz » 29 Jan 2013, 09:23

One of Khrulev’s key consultants at this time was the former chief quartermaster of the tsarist Russian Army and former assistant chief of the Red Army’s Central Supply Directorate, K. E. Goretskiî. Goretskiî was one of a number of former tsarist quartermaster officers who served the new regime in the first years of Soviet power and in some cases subsequently. See A. G. Kavtaradze, Voennye spetsialisty na sluzhbe Respubliki Sovetov. 1917–1920 gg. [Military specialists in the service of the Soviet Republic, 1917–1920] (Moscow: Nauka, 1988), p. 180. In the process of putting together the draft (as described in Skriyabin, “Iz istorii sozdaniya organov,” p. 58), Khrulev and Goretskiî disagreed again over a fundamental issue of rear service organization that had been raised first in a discussion they had in 1939. Khrulev, in delineating those rear service entities that should come under his control, “took a pencil and added one more service, artillery supply, to those under the rear service chief ’s jurisdiction.” This would have given Khrulev direct control of all ammunition, artillery, and small-arms supply, as well as weapon repair and maintenance responsibilities. This major logistic role was then the responsibility of GAU. Goretskiî, however, as he had earlier, objected strongly to Khrulev’s penciled annotation, and was able to dissuade him from adding the artillery supply service to the proposal on the grounds that this key function, because of its vast scope, would be incompatible with Khrulev’s other proposed duties. Khrulev reluctantly agreed, thus setting in motion a division of logistic responsibility that continues to the present.

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Re: A. V. Krulev

#6

Post by Der Alte Fritz » 29 Jan 2013, 09:23

Zhukov was opposed to the centralization of rear services outside of the general staff, a view he continued to hold even in the face of the general staff ’s obvious inability to deal simultaneously with operational and logistic matters. Zhukov attended Khrulev’s 28 July meeting with Stalin, and upon reading the draft State Defense Committee directive “declared peremptorily” that: “I do not agree. The authors of the draft want the rear services to undercut the general staff.” Stalin, “casting an expressive glance at G. K. Zhukov,” took back the draft and immediately signed it. Khrulev, “Stanovlenie,” p. 69.

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Re: A. V. Krulev

#7

Post by Der Alte Fritz » 29 Jan 2013, 09:25

To illustrate how important Stalin considered the front rear service chiefs, it should be noted that the first five appointed included the Chief of the General Staff Academy (Northern Front), the Chief of the Frunze Military Academy (Southwestern Front), the Chief of the Soviet Army Directorate of Military Educational Institutions (Southern Front), the Commander of Troops, Western Military District (Western Front), and the Deputy Commander of Troops, North Caucasus Military District (Briansk Front). Kurkotkin, Tyl sovetskikh vooruzhennykh sil, pp.77–78.

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Re: A. V. Krulev

#8

Post by Der Alte Fritz » 29 Jan 2013, 09:25

Typically, in the case of major operations, rear service directives were worked out by the central rear services in accord with operations plans. These directives were signed by the VGK commander in chief (Stalin) or the chief of the general staff, as well as by Khrulev. Rear service directives, which delineated front rear areas, transportation routes and capacities, timelines for accomplishing key tasks, and other issues, comprised “the principal operational rear service documents of the strategic rear services.” Kurkotkin, Tyl sovetskikh vooruzhennykh sil, p. 81.

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Re: A. V. Krulev

#9

Post by Der Alte Fritz » 29 Jan 2013, 09:31

Prewar logistic planners anticipated these systemic and resource problems, though senior Soviet commanders (severely attrited by the 1930s purges) gave logistic matters only secondary attention. Thus, when a 47-year-old corps commissar named A. V. Khrulev was appointed supply chief of the Red Army in October 1939, he found himself in a job that was ill defined and possessed little real authority over those many agencies charged with logistic support.3 Khrulev, a decorated veteran of S. M. Budennyî’s First Cavalry Army in the civil war, set out with his staff to reconstruct a rear service establishment that even in peacetime seemed clearly unsuited to support large-scale combined-arms operations.

Almost from the beginning of his tenure, however, he became immersed in the numerous problems engendered by the 1939–1940 Winter War with Finland. Transportation and logistic management problems were particularly acute in the Winter War. Even from the earliest days, railway cars supplying front forces were backed up on a number of lines because of inadequate tracking and poor planning. An attempt to alleviate this problem by also supplying the Northwest Front by sea from Arkhangelsk through Murmansk instead created chaotic conditions at the Arkhangelsk port. Every Red Army branch of service (artillery, engineer, signal, etc.) operated on its own schedule with no overall coordination.

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Information sent from operational levels to central logistic planning bodies was irregular and sometimes inaccurate.4

As a consequence of these problems, and the inability of the logistic establishment to deal with them, Khrulev pushed for the creation of a central “Quartermaster Directorate” with expanded capabilities, a request met by People’s Commissar of Defense Marshal K. E. Voroshilov, in the summer of 1940. Khrulev (now a lieutenant general) was given increased authority and staff support. While this constituted a measure of progress at the central level, it was far from the sweeping restructuring envisioned as necessary at all levels by senior logisticians.

As Khrulev continued to push for greater control over rear services in the months preceding the Soviet Union’s entry into World War II, there was considerable discussion and disagreement within the Soviet military establishment over the subordination of rear service bodies and responsibilities for planning logistic support at every level. These disagreements became particularly acute with the assignment of Army General G. I. Zhukov to be chief of the Soviet General Staff in January 1941.

General Zhukov “supported those on the general staff who believed that a general outline sufficed as a basis for directing the supply of the army in the field.”5 Under this approach:

The General Staff would calculate needs and issue a directive; the quartermaster services subordinate to it would dispatch everything requested from them; and the commandant’s offices of the general staff ’s Military Transportation Service, to which motor vehicle, rail, water, and air transport were subordinate, would deliver to the troops all types of authorized supply.6

In short, Zhukov wanted the general staff to retain direct control of key rear service entities.

By the start of the war, in accord with Zhukov’s wishes, logistic responsibilities were divided among the several principals. As the recently retired chief of staff of the Soviet Armed Forces Rear Services, Col. Gen. I. M. Golushko, noted in a considerable understatement forty years later, “a definite separateness could be observed in the organization and, consequently, in the actions of the directorates and services related to the rear support sphere.”7 At the tactical and operational levels, the control of logistic planning within fronts, armies, and divisions rested principally with the commanders and combat staffs, not specialized rear service planning bodies. This allowed only the most superficial attention to be given to rear service support because of the other combat demands placed on the commanders and staffs.8

In addition to the organizational problems and resulting difficulties in the operation of the rear service system, those logistic resources intended to support Soviet operational formations in the initial period of war were badly deployed. Basically, there were depots for all classes

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of supply (weapons and equipment, ammunition, POL [petroleum, oil, and lubricants], repair parts, food, etc.) subordinate to the various central directorates of the Commissariat of Defense, and to military districts. These stockpiles were intended for the mobilizational deployment of operational formations. However, in addition to the lack of centralized rear service management (and likely because of it), there were dangerous anomalies in what supplies were found at which levels. For example, the General Staff ’s POL reserves were virtually all located at military district level or in facilities of the national economy, with almost no stocks under direct central control.9 Thus, the general staff was limited in how quickly it could influence the POL supply of field formations.

On the other hand, ammunition stockpiles, which were the responsibility of the Main Artillery Directorate’s (GAU) Artillery Supply Service at each level, were located in GAU central, military district, and field army depots. In wartime central depots were expected to supply forward army ammunition dumps directly, while army depots in turn would supply lower echelons.10 No provision was made for a front link, though fronts would be expected to plan for the expenditure and resupply of ammunition while army entities carried out the actual resupply operations.11 The problems and confusion resulting from this kind of arrangement were not difficult for Khrulev and his staff to imagine and indeed became quickly manifest once the war began.

It is clear that the rear service support establishment existing at the time of the German attack would have had substantial problems meeting large-scale support requirements even with adequate preparation time and favorable circumstances at the beginning of war. The German attack, however, totally disrupted prewar plans for rear service mobilization and support. Huge quantities of supplies were overrun or destroyed by German forces in the first days of the conflict. Those supplies surviving or located further in the interior were often “in the hands of various services that were not subordinated to combined-arms headquarters” and thus were not made available to combat units.12 Rear service elements had to simultaneously provide retreating units with supplies, undertake the mobilization deployment of rear service units, and evacuate supplies.13 In addition, because of the concurrent requirements to sustain Soviet units and operational formations in combat and evacuate over 1,300 industrial enterprises as well as agricultural and other resources, “two gigantic train flows were moving in opposite directions with incredible difficulty under constant air attack by the enemy.”14

It is not surprising, in light of the above, that the Soviet logistic support system failed in most respects to meet the enormous demands so suddenly placed upon it. By early July 1941, by Soviet assessment, Zhukov and the General Staff were so immersed in operational matters that they had neither a conception of the logistic situation at the fronts,

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nor knew what the forces required in terms of logistic support. No requirements had, in fact, even been leveled on Khrulev and his staff. On 27 July a thoroughly frustrated Khrulev prepared a written proposal for a centralized rear service establishment designed to impose a measure of order on this rapidly unraveling rear support situation.15 The proposal was passed to the Supreme Commander, I. V. Stalin, who approved Khrulev’s recommendations and immediately ordered that a draft State Defense Committee (SDC) decision on the Red Army rear service organization be prepared.16

Working with his staff, Khrulev quickly drew up the SDC draft decree and presented it to Stalin in the predawn hours of 28 July.17 Over Zhukov’s objections, the decree was approved - a move that was to establish by 1 August the essential organizations and responsibilities of the Soviet Armed Forces Rear Services as they continued to exist through the 1980s.18 It also institutionalized what appears to be a degree of creative tension between the national-level rear services and the General Staff.19

Under the rear service reorganization approved by Stalin, Khrulev was named Chief of the Red Army Rear and a Deputy Commissar (later Minister) of Defense for Rear Services. A Main Directorate for the Rear (consisting of a Main Staff, Military Railroad Directorate, Highway Directorate, and Inspectorate) was established, with Main Quartermaster, Fuel Supply, Ambulance (Medical), and Veterinary Directorates also assigned to Khrulev’s direct control.20 The Staff of the Main Directorate of the Rear had sections designated to deal with rear service planning for operational formations, planning rail and motor transport shipments, organizing logistic entities and facilities; and handling general issues.21 Thus, Khrulev had control of vast logistic resources in the form of transport, supply stockpiles, and key services, as well as being able to speak with the authority of a Deputy Commissar of Defense. Only technical support - repair, maintenance, the supply of technical equipment including ammunition, and major end items - remained under the control of main and central technical directorates (e.g., GAU) and of the various branch services (artillery, armor, engineer, signal, etc.).22 These rear service organizations and resources were in total referred to as “central” or “strategic” rear services - assets the Supreme High Command (Verkhovnoe Glavnokomandovanie [VGK]) used to influence the course of strategic operations. As the war progressed, this level of rear service support became critical to the direct logistic support of operational formations and, as a consequence, integral to Soviet operational logistics.

Within the operational logistic system itself, “chiefs of the rear,” who were simultaneously deputy commanders for rear services, were set up in the fronts and armies. These officers and their staffs had duties analogous to those of Khrulev and his central apparatus. They were directly and immediately subordinate to the commander of the given operational

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formation, and subordinate “in a special sense” to the chief of the rear at the next higher level.23 They were responsible for planning and controlling designated rear service activities of the fronts and armies, while the commanders and other staff officers concerned themselves with force planning and employment issues.

Stalin himself emphasized that supplying armies and fronts required an “iron discipline” and that the new deputy commanders for rear services “must be dictators in the rear zone” of their fronts.24 The rear service chiefs at all levels exercised a coordinating role even in regard to those technical support entities that were not directly subordinate to them. They accomplished this through their control of transportation - a role that grew as the war progressed - and were thus the center for all rear service planning from strategic to tactical levels.25 On 19 August a Chief of Rear Services of the Soviet Army Air Forces was established.26 This officer and his staff (replicated at lower levels) handled all aviation-specific supply items for flying and ground support units in the air armies of the fronts or other air units, while coordinating with the Red Army Chief of Rear Services and staff for all other supply items.27 Since the Main Administration of the Air Force was a component of the Red Army, the Air Force Chief of Rear Services was subordinate in a “special sense” to Khrulev.

By mid-August 1941, then, with a basic rear support structure in place, Khrulev and his subordinates undertook the staggering task of imposing order on a logistic situation that was failing at every level. He was, more specifically, charged with

Managing the rear’s organization, transporting troops and replacements, delivering all types of materiel to the fronts …, evacuating casualties, patients and military property [and] … maintaining information on the presence of military materiel reserves in the fronts (armies) and bases, as well as on the availability of all kinds of materiel in the field army.28

Each of these functions encompassed numerous and complex components that had to be thoroughly planned and coordinated in accord with developing combat operations.

In performing these myriad tasks, a workable delineation of responsibility was developed between the central rear service bodies and the general staff, and between front and army commanders and their new rear service deputies. The general staff ’s Main Operations Directorate (and in an analogous way the front and army operations department staffs) would communicate to the rear services general, initial data on forthcoming combat operations and possible requirements. On this basis, rear service staffs worked out detailed logistic support plans for the operation.29

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Re: A. V. Krulev

#10

Post by Der Alte Fritz » 29 Jan 2013, 09:34

Motor transport at all levels was increased to the extent possible, though this was in critically short supply. As a consequence, extensive use was made of animal-drawn transport at all levels, as well as motor transport columns under VGK (central rear service) control.34 The new trend of using air transport for supplying operational formations gained momentum as the war progressed. Transport aircraft employed in such a role were also principally assets of the VGK.35 Enormous experience was gained in managing military rail shipments and in building and restoring rail lines. To facilitate this, in March 1942 Khrulev became the People’s Commissar of Railroads in addition to his other posts.36

Other significant developments during the first period of war included the extensive use of rear service operations groups. Under this practice, central rear service staffs, including sometimes Khrulev himself, were dispatched to the fronts to coordinate logistic activities and deal with special problems.37 This approach proved useful throughout the war, especially in supporting strategic offensive operations later in the conflict, as well as in formulating approaches for theater-level or strategic rear service control and management four decades later. In March 1942 the Soviets established the Trophy Service, which had organizations subordinated to rear service chiefs at central, front, and army levels to collect, classify, and evacuate captured German war materiel.38 The large quantities of materiel they recovered played an important role in offsetting the severe shortages of Soviet weapons and transport stocks at that time. In May 1942 the Soviets introduced rear service deputy commanders or chiefs of the rear at division and corps levels and established a Navy Chief of Rear Services.39

Great effort was given in the Stalingrad counteroffensives (in the Caucasus as well) to building and restoring roads and railways, with Khrulev requesting and receiving support from two VGK air transport divisions to help reduce transportation shortfalls.47 The role of special line of communications troops - Highway and Railway Troops, as well as other special bridge-building and engineer elements - thus grew in importance as an organic component of operational rear services and one critical to the successful supply and support of advancing formations. The application of experience gained in transportation-route construction, maintenance, and management was clearly evident in the buildup for the Kursk Battle.48

To better manage the central rear service resources that were playing such increasingly important front support roles in the switch to offensive operations, Khrulev established in the Azerbaidzhan SSR in 1942 a “supply base for the center” to improve the control of rear service resources. This effort included the dispatch of military materiel received from the defense industry and the shipment of supplies through ports on the Caspian Sea.49 In a subsequent effort to bring central materiel resources closer to the fronts engaging in offensive operations, central depots, for the first time in the war, were moved west of Moscow and the Volga in the spring of 1943.50 The forward deployment of central rear services would continue throughout the war. Technical support at the central and front levels was improved as well, with central- and front-subordinated assembly and distribution points for damaged combat and support equipment established.51

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Re: A. V. Krulev

#11

Post by John Hilly » 29 Jan 2013, 15:00

" In May 1942 the Soviets introduced rear service deputy commanders or chiefs of the rear at division and corps levels..."
Are these, often Generals, the ones discribed as "Second in Command" maybe mistakenly in operations means?

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Re: A. V. Krulev

#12

Post by Der Alte Fritz » 29 Jan 2013, 15:16

It is the guy marked with a green circle for Rifle Divisions:
Soviet RD 04-550 Dec 1942 AHFx.jpg
I think that the point being made is that he is one of the command staff but supplied by Rear Services

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Re: A. V. Krulev

#13

Post by Vaeltaja » 29 Jan 2013, 19:25

Division quatermaster?

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Re: A. V. Krulev

#14

Post by Der Alte Fritz » 29 Jan 2013, 20:34

Not that having all this responsibility did not come at a price. For Khrulev's day to day life, I have consulted "Sebag Montefiori's "Court of the Red Tsar":

Khrulev survived the Army prge of 1937, the debacle of the Finnish War and being associated with the defeat in 1941. No doubt his 1st Cavalry connection helped there but he was still at the mercy of the thugs of Stalin's Court.

"Over dinner with Roosevelt, Churchill and de Gaulle in 1944, Stalin introduces his entourage with a series of toasts: for Kagonovich, if the trains don’t run on time (pause for effect) ‘we’ll shoot him’. Novikov would be hung, Khrulev also: ‘that’s the custom in our country!’. "

After the war his wife was arrested as part of the Jewish Doctors Plot, as she was Jewish.
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Re: A. V. Krulev

#15

Post by Der Alte Fritz » 29 Jan 2013, 20:43

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