reinforcements on their way from Russia. Desperate rearguard actions made possible this retreat, which included even a brief victory over one of Napoleon’s exposed corps at the Battle of D?rnstein. Despite Napoleon’s best efforts, Kutuzov managed to withdraw his army and link up with reinforcements, headed by the tsar himself, at Olm?tz in Moravia in late November. Fooled into thinking that Napoleon was weak, Alexander overruled the more cautious Kutuzov repeatedly in the days that followed, ordering the field marshal to launch an ill-advised attack on the French at Austerlitz on December 2. Wounded once again while trying to rally his men to hold a critical position, Kutuzov helped Alexander salvage what could be saved from the wreckage, and then commanded the army during its retreat back to Russian Poland.
Blaming Kutuzov for his own mistakes, Alexander relegated Kutuzov to the post of military governor general of Kiev. It was not long before Kutuzov returned to battle, however, for he joined the Army of Moldavia in 1808 and commanded large units in the war against the Turks (1806-1812). In 1809 he was relieved once more and sent to serve as governor general of Lithuania, but in 1811 Alexander designated Kutuzov as the commander of the Russian army fighting the Turks. In the shadow of the impending Franco-Russian war, Kutuzov waged a skillful campaign that resulted in the Peace of Bucharest bare weeks before the French invasion began.
The War of 1812 was Kutuzov’s greatest campaign. Alexander relieved Mikhail Barclay de Tolly after his retreat from Smolensk and appointed Kutuzov, hoping thereby to see a more active resistance to the French onslaught. Kutuzov, however, continued Barclay de Tolly’s program of retreating in the face of superior French numbers, until he stood to battle at Borodino. Following that combat, Kutuzov continued his withdrawal, eventually abandoning Moscow and retreating to the south. He defeated Napoleon’s attempt to break out to the richer pastures of Ukraine at the Battle of Maloyaroslavets, and then harried the retreating French forces all the way to the Russian frontier and beyond. He died on April 28, 1813, a few weeks after having been relieved of command of the Russian armies for the last time. See also: ALEXANDER I; AUSTERLITZ, BATTLE OF; BORODINO, BATTLE OF; BUCHAREST, TREATY OF; FRENCH WAR OF 1812; MILITARY, IMPERIAL ERA; NAPOLEON I; RUSSO-TURKISH WARS
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Parkinson, Roger. (1976). The Fox of the North: The Life of Kutuzov, General of War and Peace. London: P. Davies.
(1888-1935), Bolshevik, politician, Stalinist, active in civil war and subsequent industrialization initiatives.
Active in the Social Democratic Party from 1904, Valerian Kuybyshev was an Old Bolshevik who played a major role in the Russian Civil War as a political commissar with the Red Army. Having fought on the Eastern Front against the forces of Admiral Kolchak, he was instrumental in consolidating Soviet power in Central Asia following the civil war. Kuybyshev subsequently held several important political posts: chairman of the Central Control Commission (1923); chairman of the Supreme Council of the Soviet Economy (1926); member of the Politburo (1927); chairman of Gos-plan (1930); and deputy chairman of both the Council of People’s Commissars and Council of Labor and Defense (1930).
A staunch Stalinist throughout the 1920s, Kuybyshev advocated rapid industrialization and supported Stalin in the struggle against the Right Opposition headed by Nikolai Bukharin. Kuyby-shev’s organizational skills and boundless energy were critical in launching the First Five-Year Plan
KUZNETSOV, NIKOLAI GERASIMOVICH
in 1928. However, in the early 1930s Kuybyshev became associated with a moderate bloc in the Politburo who opposed some of Stalin’s more repressive political policies.
Kuybyshev died suddenly on January 26, 1935, ostensibly of a heart attack, but there is some speculation that he may have been murdered by willful medical mistreatment on the orders of Gen-rich Yagoda-an early purge following the assassination of Sergei Kirov. Whatever the actual circumstances of his death, he was given a state funeral, and the city of Samara was renamed in his honor. See also: CIVIL WAR OF 1917-1922; INDUSTRIALIZATION, RAPID; RED ARMY; RIGHT OPPOSITION; STALIN, JOSEF VISSARIONOVICH.
Conquest, Robert. (1990). The Great Terror: A Reassessment. New York: Oxford University Press. Kuibyshev, V. V. (1935). Personal Recollections. Moscow.
(1904-1974), commissar of the navy and admiral of the fleet of the Soviet Union.
A native of the Vologda area, from a peasant background, Kuznetsov was born on July 11, 1904. He joined the Red Navy in 1919, served during the civil war with North Dvina Flotilia, and fought against the Allied Expeditionary Force and the Whites. He served in the Black Sea Fleet beginning in 1921, became a Communist Party member in 1925, and graduated from the Frunze Naval School in 1926 and the naval Academy in 1932. He served as assistant commander of the cruiser Krasnyi Kavkaz (1932-1934), and as commander of the cruiser Chervona Ukraina (1934-1936). Kuznetsov served as naval attach? in Spain and was the Soviet advisor to the Republican Navy during the Spanish Civil War from 1936 to 1937. After returning from Spain, he served as the first deputy commander of the Pacific Fleet (commissioned August 15, 1937) and as commander of the Pacific Fleet from 1938 to 1939.
Kuznetsov was recalled to Moscow in March of 1939 and was appointed as the first deputy. Days later, on March 12, 1939, he was appointed commissar of the Navy. He held this position until 1946, leading the Soviet Navy during World War II with mixed results. The Navy did not perform well against an enemy whose naval interests were elsewhere, and it remained in a defensive mode for most of the war, suffering heavily at the hands of the Luftwaffe. The Soviet retreat from the Baltics proved to be a fiasco, but the Navy performed better in the evacuation of Odessa and Sevastopol. Two landings in Kerch in 1942 and 1943 ended in disaster, but the blame was not confined to the Navy. The Volga Flotilla played a significant part in the defense of Stalingrad, and the stationary Baltic Fleet provided artillery support in the Battle of Leningrad. Throughout 1944 and 1945, a number of landings took place behind the enemy lines, which resulted in little gain and heavy losses.
The outspoken Kuznetsov may have offended Stalin, although he blamed the Navy’s shortcomings on Andrei Alexandrovich Zhdanov, the political commissar of the Navy before the war. In February 1946, Stalin divided the Baltic and Pacific Fleets into four separate units, a decision Kuznetsov opposed. The end result was the removal of Kuznetsov. He was forced to face a Court of Honor, where several admirals were accused of passing naval secrets to the Allies during the war. Kuznetsov was reduced to the rank of rear admiral on February 3, 1948, and was sent to the reserves, but was called back and appointed as deputy commander in chief in the Far East for the Navy on June 12, 1948. On February 20, 1950, he was reappointed to his old job of commander of the Pacific Fleet. Stalin, encouraged by Lavrenti Beria (head of the secret police), also recalled him, and once again named him commissar of the Navy on July 20, 1951. He kept this position even after Stalin’s death.
On the night of October 29, 1955, the Soviet Navy suffered its greatest peacetime disaster when the battleship Novorossisk blew up in Sevastopol, with the loss of 603 lives. Kuznetsov was blamed for this disaster, and was removed from his position. On February 15, 1956, he was once again reduced in rank and forcibly retired. Kuznetsov’s reputation was rehabilitated only in 1988, fourteen years after his death and after a long campaign by his widow. During his roller-coaster career, he was rear admiral twice, vice admiral three times, and admiral of the Fleet of the Soviet Union twice. He was deputy to the Supreme Soviet three times, and served the Eighteenth Party Congress in 1939. He was also declared a Hero of the Soviet Union on
KYRGYZSTAN AND KYRGYZ
September 14, 1945. The Soviet naval policy changed after Kuznetsov, who was mainly a surface-ship admiral, to emphasize an oceanic navy that was heavily dependent on a large fleet of submarines, missile cruisers, and even the occasional aircraft carrier. See also: BALTIC FLEET; BLACK SEA FLEET; MILITARY, IMPERIAL; PACIFIC FLEET
