Aleksey Alekseyevich Yepishev
Head of the Main Political Administration (GlavPU) of the Soviet Army and the Navy during the period 1962-1985, army general Aleksey Alekseyevich Yepishev / Alexei Epishev, served in this post for longer than anyone else. He played an exceptional role in the full subordination of the Armed Forces to the interests of the leadership of the CPSU. Yepishev was known for his ultrachauvinist views, was one of the influential party and military figures in the USSR. Epishev, as chief of political administration for the Soviet army, was said to have been the initiator and organizer of the blitzkrieg in Afghanistan. For more than 20 years as head of the GlavPU he became one of the most odious figures - a symbol of ideological control over the mood of the army, a guarantee of loyalty to the military Communist Party.
He had full power in the army, since he did not even obey the Minister of Defense of the USSR ( GlavPUR was simultaneously a department of the CPSU Central Committee, all appointments in GlavPUR were exclusively carried out by the Central Committee of the CPSU). A supporter of the most dogmatic and orthodox views, a categorical opponent of the mention of repression, of the personality cult, of unsuccessful operations during the Great Patriotic War. He said: "Who needs your truth, if it prevents us from living?"
Yepishev was a member of the CPSU since 1929. He was Born 6(19) May 1908 in Astrakhan in the family of a worker. His father, Alexei Dmitrievich, worked at a forestry factory, his mother, Matryona Ivanovna, a housewife. From an early age, Aleksei Alekseevich knew need and hard work. After graduating from high school, he settled in cooperative workshops. At the age of 17, when he joined the Young Communist League, Epishev became the ringleader among young workers. On a tour of the District Committee of the Komsomol he graduated from the courses of Komsomol workers and was appointed instructor of the district bureau of young pioneers. Two years later he became the head of the department of propaganda and agitation of the district committee of the Komsomol.
One of the pressing problems that the youth leaders had to solve at that time was the elimination of illiteracy. It was not so easy to organize classes. After all, first of all they had to be financially secured. Aleksei Alekseevich remembered how "the guys" were "sophisticated". As a blackboard they used a sheet of old plywood, they wrote on it not with chalk, but with charcoal in so-called notebooks - sheets of wrapping paper. The active work of the Komsomol leader was noted by the senior comrades and recommended him for joining the Communist Party. In 1929, Alexei became a member of the CPSU (b) and appointed instructor of the district party committee.
In September 1930, Epishev washe was drafted into the army. He began service in the 7th regiment of communication of the Volga Military District on one-year courses of commanders. Upon termination, he received an appointment to the headquarters of the 61st Infantry Division.
He graduated from the Military Academy of Mechanization and Motorization (1938). Quite unexpectedly for him, he was sent to party work in industry, but at the same time remained in the cadres of the Red Army. Alexei Alekseevich was appointed CPSU (b) party organizer at the plant named after the Comintern in Kharkov. The main products of the plant were locomotives, tanks, tractors, propellers for submarines. In addition, the enterprise was upgrading and testing new models of military equipment. In August 1938 the Party Central Committee decided to develop a new type of tank. This was entrusted to the Kharkov plant. It would not be an exaggeration to say that Epishev did much to ensure the production of the legendary T-34 tank. For participation in the creation and establishment of the production of the T-34 tank, Epishev was awarded the first military order - the Red Star.
He was distinguished by the fact that after a week after his arrival in Kharkov had already delivered a speech, exposing the "enemies of the people" on the KPZ. In many respects the shootings of the founders of BT tanks and in the collective of the plant are connected with his name. One by one, the two first secretaries of the regional committee were arrested, and in March 1940, Epishev became the first secretary of the Kharkiv regional committee and city committee. In 1940, a year before the war, Aleksei Alekseevich was elected first secretary of the Kharkov Regional Committee of the Communist Party. The region together with the regional center was the largest industrial and agricultural region not only in Ukraine but also in the country as a whole. Defense issues in those years stood at one of the first places in the work of the leadership of the Kharkov region.
He served as the First Secretary of the Nizhny Tagil City Committee, the Deputy Minister of Medium Engineering, and the Commissioner of the Military Council of the Stalingrad Front during the Battle of Stalingrad in 1942-43. The first secretary of the regional committee was entrusted with the task of securing the evacuation of factories in industrial Kharkov, including the Comintern plant, and creating a powerful tank building base in the new location. In 1942 - 1943 Alexey Alexeyevich was engaged in the development of the defense industry in the Urals.
In May 1943, he became a member of the Military Council of the 40th, then of the 38th Army, who participated in the liberation of Ukraine, Poland and Czechoslovakia. He was always distinguished by the ability to distinguish the main thing, to support in time a reasonable initiative, the ability to concentrate the forces of a large team on the solution of complex combat tasks. These valuable qualities were useful in the preparation of troops for the crossing of the Dnieper, with the liberation of Kiev, the offensive in Ukraine, in the Carpathians, with the liberation of Czechoslovakia. At the end of the war, he was on the same front with Brezhnev.
In 1946, Episheva was demobilized, and in May approved as Secretary of the Central Committee of the CP of Ukraine for Personnel and member of the organizing committee of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Ukraine. Then he was appointed first secretary of the Odessa Regional Committee.
In 1950 he graduated from the Academy of Social Sciences at the Central Committee of the CPSU(b). In 1950-51 and 1953-55 he was the 1st secretary of the Odessa regional committee. In 1951-1953 he was the Deputy Minister of State Security of the USSR for Personnel - Head of the Personnel Department of the USSR MGB (August 26, 1951 - March 11, 1953).
In 1951, after the arrest of the Minister of State Security Viktor Abakumov, the Ministry underwent a major purge. The people of Abakumov were removed from their posts and put. The key post of the Deputy Minister of State Security for Personnel was taken by Epishev, who was transferred to the capital. At the party conference of the apparatus of the MGB, Epishev suggested electing a new deputy minister of state security, Mikhail Kuzmich Ryumin, who later would be shot for falsifying the notorious "doctors' case".
After the death of IV Stalin and the liquidation of the MGB he once again became First Secretary of the Odessa Regional Committee of the Communist Party of Ukraine (1953-1955). His arrest was saved only by the fall of L.P.Beria. Epishev was then sent to diplomatic work. Many top leaders of the Ministry of State Security were punished for their crimes. Episheva ignored these processes.
In 1955-61 he was the ambassador of the USSR in Romania, in 1961-62 - in Yugoslavia. Yepishev had never been a diplomat, but a colonel-general of the Red army. In Belgrade it was a matter of common knowledge that Yepishev was sent to Belgrade with the special and most important mission of working out plans for the rearming of the Yugoslav Army with Soviet weapons. His mission successfully accomplished, he returned to the Soviet Union and being rewarded with one of the most important positions in the Soviet hierarchy. During the parade of May 1, 1962, in Belgrade, the Yugoslav Communist regime displayed 20 new Soviet-made T-54 tanks, "the first such weapons the Yugoslav Communists have obtained since their 1948 ouster from the Soviet bloc" (New York Times, May 2, 1962)
Since May 1962, he was the head of the Main Political Administration (GlavPU) of the Soviet Army and the Navy. He worked in this position under the three ministers of defense - Malinovsky, Grechko and Ustinov. At the sixtieth birthday, Brezhnev made him Hero of the Soviet Union. He was awarded the title Hero of the Soviet Union "for the skilful leadership of the troops, personal courage and bravery shown during the Great Patriotic War, a great contribution to the preparation and enhancement of combat readiness of troops in the post-war period."
At this high post, Epishev carried out great work to strengthen the political and moral state of the Soviet Armed. Forces and increased military discipline, the mobilization of personal. composition of the army and navy for further improvement of combat and political. training. Carrying out the leadership of the party politician, work, directs it to rallying soldiers around the CPSU, mobilizing them to steadily increase vigilance and combat readiness, the education of patriotic soldiers and internationalists, devoted to the party, the people, the Motherland.
The main political department of the Soviet Army and the Navy played a special role in the spiritual life of the country. Brezhnev's love for the army resulted in the fact that the Ministry of Defense and GlavPUR gained unprecedented influence. The commander of the Great Patriotic Army, General of the Army Epishev, became the trusted person of Brezhnev in the army. He showed special rigidity in ideological issues, feeling himself the chief commissar and guardian of morals.
Never before has military political workers played such a role in the spiritual life of the country. Formally, GlavPUR had the rights of the Central Committee department. In fact, the role of the army political agency became greater, in the dispute with other departments of the Central Committee, Epishev took the upper hand. Whenever the ideological question was discussed at the secretariat of the Central Committee, the presiding questioner asked the traditional question: "What does GlavPUR think?" And he listened attentively to Epishev's opinion.
At the 19th, 20th, 22nd Party congresses, he was elected a candidate for membership in the Central Committee of the CPSU. Since November 1964 member of the CPSU Central Committee. Member of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR 1st, 3rd, 4th, 6th-8th convocations. He was awarded two Orders of Lenin, three Orders of the Red Banner, orders of Bogdan Khmelnitsky 1st degree, Patriotic War of the 1st degree, the Red Banner of Labor, three Orders of the Red Star, six foreign orders, and medals.
Epishev signed the detailed charge sent to the Central Committee against Konstantin Simonov, which ended with these words: "The new book of K. Simonov is deeply mistaken, unworthy of the Soviet writer. It can seriously harm the patriotic education of our youth, distorting the immortal feat of our people in the name of defending the gains of October ... Given the viciousness of Konstantin Simonov's notes "One Hundred Days of the War" and the damage they can bring, the main political administration of the Soviet Army and the Navy believes that it is inadvisable to publish them". Epishev's opinion prevailed. Simonov's military diaries were not printed. After watching the film about the victory near Moscow, shot according to the scenario of Simonov and another military writer, Eugene Vorobyov, Epishev and Grechko expressed so many remarks that they blocked release to the theaters.
By 1965 the party apparatus throughout the country demanded to stop criticizing Stalin, not to talk more about repression and camps, about a catastrophe in the initial period of the war. It was only two years after Khrushchev's resignation, and it was decided to pretend that the tragedy of 1941 was simply not there. In Brezhnev's speech at the solemn meeting on the eve of the twentieth anniversary of victory, on May 8, 1965, for the first time in a long time in a positive context, the names of Stalin and Zhukov were heard. Marshal Zhukov was sitting in the hall. After 1957, this was the first time when he was summoned to a solemn meeting.
There are plenty of "blank spots" in the history of the Great Patriotic War. One time a famous historian told about a meeting with Army General Yepishev , then head of the Main Political Administration of the Army and Navy. When it came to truth in historical science, the old party nomenclator, who served several General Secretary faithfully and truthfully, did not hesitate to state his credo: "And who needs your truth if it prevents us from living?" The full truth about that war was not needed either by Stalin, Khrushchev, Brezhnev, or by those who came after them.
The 23rd CPSU Congress opened on 29 March 1966. In his speech to the congress, Yepishev warned against relaxing ideological work, and stated that some "bearers of petty bourgeois licentiousness" under the "pretence of struggling against the consequences of the cult of personality and others under the guise of advocating historical truth, run down the heroic history and struggle of party and people, and try to blacken Soviet reality and minimize the grandeur of our triumphs over fascism".
On 16 May 1966, Yepishev, head of the armed forces' political administration, gave a dogmatic speech at a conference on the indoctrination of youth. He reportedly called on writers to show the greatness of the times instead of questioning heroic legends. He praised the literature of the Stalin era, and said that Stalin's reasons for sending people to death or prison camps should be understood.
Yepishev had experience putting down political unrest in Soviet satellites, having played a key role in the Soviet intervention in Czechoslovakia in 1968.
In early April 1979, Gen. Alexei A. Yepishev, chief of the main political directorate of the Soviet army and navy, visited Kabul to evaluate the military and political situation and to express Soviet concerns to Prime Minister Taraki. After his visit, Soviet advisors made all major military decisions.
According to General Yepishev, the GPU's indoctrination efforts in the Armed Forces were not only designed to mold ideal Soviet soldiers and sailors, but also to continue the development of what has been called the "new Soviet man". Many employees of Glavpur recall that proposals and recommendations emanating from their boss were notable for their validity and reasonableness. Aleksei Alekseevich always supported a sensible initiative, but at the same time he opposed endless experimentation, inventing new forms without considering their expediency. Everyone who knew and worked directly under the leadership of Aleksey Alekseevich always liked his deepest adherence to principles, respect for people and devotion to the Motherland.
Alexei Epishev died September 15, 1985, and was buried in the Novodevichy Cemetery.
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