Between Two Extraordinary Congresses: Marshal Chuikov in January 1959

Pictured: Marshal V.I. Chuikov, right, speaking with Marshal N.I. Krylov inside the Kremlin during the 21st Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, 27 January–5 February 1959.

January 1959 found Marshal Chuikov at an important point in his postwar career. More than sixteen years had passed since he assumed command of the 62nd Army at Stalingrad, and nearly fourteen years had passed since his forces fought their way into Berlin. He was now a Marshal of the Soviet Union, commander of the Kiev Military District, and actively involved in the Communist Party leadership.

Two major Party congresses during the month took place in quick succession. The first was the 20th Extraordinary (or mid-term) Congress of the Communist Party of Ukraine, held in Kiev on 16–17 January. Less than two weeks later, the 21st Extraordinary Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union opened in Moscow on 27 January and continued through 5 February. The latter congress launched the ambitious Seven-Year Plan for 1959–1965. For Chuikov, however, January 1959 is especially interesting because of something he said in Kiev—and because of the man at the center of those remarks: Marshal Georgy Konstantinovich Zhukov.

Pictured: Delegates from the Lugansk Region to the 20th Congress of the Communist Party of Ukraine, held in Kiev on 16–17 January 1959. Marshal V.I. Chuikov is seated at the far right. The photograph is from my private archive. The horizontal crease resulted from damage during the mailing process.

Chuikov commanded the Kiev Military District since 1953, a position he would retain until 1960. His responsibilities therefore extended well beyond the battlefield leadership for which he remains best known. During his service in Kiev, he also occupied a visible position within the political structure of the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic. The photograph of the Lugansk delegates captures this less frequently discussed dimension of his career.

The 20th Extraordinary Congress of the Communist Party of Ukraine and the 21st Extraordinary Congress of the Communist Party in Moscow both occurred during a particularly interesting period in Soviet history. Abroad, Nikita Khrushchev's government was emphasizing the possibility of peaceful competition with the West while simultaneously pressing the Berlin question. Earlier that month, Soviet Deputy Premier Anastas Mikoyan had traveled to the United States, where his discussions with American officials included Berlin, Germany, disarmament, and trade. The Soviet Union was also pursuing proposals concerning Germany. On 10 January, Moscow called for a peace conference and circulated a proposed German peace treaty.

At home, however, another issue still lingered within the Soviet military establishment: the fall of Marshal Zhukov. Zhukov had been removed as Soviet Minister of Defense in October 1957. His fall followed an extraordinary period in which his military prestige had been accompanied by increasing political influence. The episode was particularly complicated because Zhukov had helped Khrushchev during the political confrontation with the Anti-Party Group only months before his own removal. Zhukov’s elevation to full membership in the Party Presidium strengthened both his personal influence and that of the military within Soviet policymaking. By October, the political environment had changed dramatically.

The dispute surrounding Zhukov concerned the relationship between professional military command and Communist Party authority within the armed forces. A later CIA study, dated 8 June 1959 and titled Party-Military Relations in the USSR and the Fall of Marshal Zhukov, examined this struggle in considerable detail. The report remains useful as a contemporary American intelligence interpretation of the episode, although its conclusions should be read as analysis produced by an outside intelligence service rather than as an authoritative account of Soviet leaders' private motives.

One distinction made in that study is particularly important. Its analysts concluded that Zhukov's conflict concerned less the existence of Party authority than the way that authority operated inside the military. In their interpretation, the fundamental disagreement involved the practical relationship between Party organizations and professional commanders. That question touched something fundamental within the Soviet system: Who ultimately controlled the armed forces, and how much independence should military commanders possess within their own sphere?

It was against this background that Chuikov spoke at the Ukrainian Communist Party Congress. The June 1959 CIA study specifically returned to what had happened in Kiev several months earlier, reporting that during the January congress, Chuikov had accused Zhukov of “revisionism.” Significantly, the report also observed that the accusation apparently did not develop into a sustained new campaign against the former defense minister. According to its analysts, the charge was not subsequently repeated, and Zhukov's case was not raised at the 21st Party Congress in Moscow later that month.

That detail makes Chuikov's remarks especially intriguing. Zhukov had already been removed from power for more than a year. The major campaign against him had occurred in 1957. Yet here was Chuikov, one of the Soviet Union's most prominent wartime commanders, publicly returning to the subject in January 1959—and the West took notice.

Pictured: A 21 January 1959 newspaper report announcing Marshal Chuikov's remarks concerning Marshal G.K. Zhukov at the Ukrainian Party Congress.

The episode can easily be read through the lens of the extraordinary personalities involved. Zhukov and Chuikov were two of the most famous commanders produced by the Great Patriotic War. Their wartime careers had intersected, particularly during the final campaign against Berlin. Yet reducing the 1959 episode to a personal disagreement risks overlooking its institutional context. Chuikov was speaking as a senior Soviet Marshal who was also a member of the Communist Party leadership in Ukraine. Zhukov's downfall had become intertwined with a much larger debate concerning military authority and the Communist Party's position within the armed forces.

The CIA study itself interpreted Zhukov's fall as the culmination of opposition from several important parts of the Soviet establishment, including senior military figures and ultimately Khrushchev. Chuikov's remarks therefore belonged to a political environment larger than the relationship between two military heroes.

Only days after the Ukrainian congress, Chuikov traveled to Moscow for the 21st Extraordinary Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, which opened on 27 January. The contrast is striking. In Kiev, Chuikov had participated in a Party congress where the political legacy of Zhukov briefly resurfaced. In Moscow, he joined the larger Soviet leadership at a congress focused heavily on the country's future. The 21st Congress abandoned the remaining portion of the existing Five-Year Plan and introduced the Seven-Year Plan for 1959–1965.

The 21^st Congress also occurred amid Khrushchev's public discussion of arms reductions and East-West relations. On 27 January, the same day the congress opened, Khrushchev spoke of arms reduction, nuclear testing, European troop withdrawals, and negotiations concerning Germany. TASS (known as the Telegraph Agency of the Soviet Union, the major news source of the time) later stated that a planned reduction of 300,000 members of the armed forces had been completed at the beginning of the year. This was the environment in which Chuikov now operated—he was participating in a Soviet political system confronting questions of economic development, nuclear weapons, military organization, Germany, and the evolving Cold War.

Pictured: a still from a documentary film from the 21^st Congress of the Communist Party in Moscow, late January 1959. Marshal Chuikov is sitting on the second row.

Film footage from the 21st Congress provides another, much more personal glimpse of Chuikov. Seated in the second row, he can be seen wearing a hearing aid. His hearing difficulties have been associated with the tremendous artillery and aerial bombardment he experienced during the war, particularly at Stalingrad. It is a small detail, easily overlooked amid the uniforms, delegates, speeches, and ceremony of a Party congress. Yet it creates a powerful connection between the Soviet Marshal of 1959 and the Red Army General of 1942. The war was over, but its physical consequences remained.

Around him was a Soviet Union looking toward ambitious economic plans, technological competition, nuclear strategy, and a changing relationship with the West. Chuikov himself was approaching another major professional transition. In 1960, after seven years commanding the Kiev Military District, he would become Commander-in-Chief of the Soviet Ground Forces and a Deputy Minister of Defense.

January 1959 offers an unusually concentrated view of Vasily Ivanovich's postwar life. Within the space of several weeks, we see him as a military commander, Party official, congress delegate, public critic of a former superior, and senior marshal approaching the highest levels of the Soviet armed forces.

We also see the complicated relationship between wartime memory and postwar politics. Chuikov and Zhukov belonged to the same victorious generation of Soviet commanders, but victory in 1945 did not freeze those relationships in place. The political struggles that followed Stalin's death created new alliances, new expectations, and new dangers for senior military leaders. Zhukov's extraordinary wartime reputation could not protect him when questions arose concerning the relationship between military authority and Party control. Chuikov survived that environment and continued to advance.

His remarks in Kiev therefore deserve attention, but they should also be approached carefully. The surviving contemporary sources tell us what he publicly said more readily than they tell us why he chose to say it. Whether his criticism reflected personal conviction, institutional loyalty, political calculation, agreement with Khrushchev's position, or some combination of these factors requires evidence beyond the public statement itself. That uncertainty is part of the history.

The photograph of Chuikov seated with the Lugansk delegates captures a moment before all of those questions had settled into historical memory. He was fifty-eight years old, still actively commanding the Kiev Military District, still participating in Party affairs, and still moving upward within the Soviet military establishment. Within days, he would be in Moscow for another congress. Within a year, he would leave Kiev for one of the highest military appointments in the Soviet Union—Commander-in-Chief of the Soviet Ground Forces and Deputy Minister of Defense. And behind him remained Stalingrad, Berlin, and a generation of commanders whose wartime relationships had entered the far more complicated terrain of postwar Soviet politics.