Kliment Voroshilov

They allowed us to bleed for years and years on the Eastern Front while they prevaricated about crossing the English Channel at one point.

Voroshilov, who's one of Stalin's old cronies from the Civil War days, he even said, I think, at the Tehran conference to the British and Americans, I don't understand the fuss.

Crossing the channel, this is just like a big river crossing, right? We do these all the time in Russia.

What's holding you up? And they were obsessed with the fact that the West had been dragging its feet.

It was made abundantly evident at Tehran that Marshall had earned the warm approval of Stalin.

On page 783 of the Sherwood record, the author notes that both Stalin and Voroshilov obviously recognized Marshall as the supreme advocate of Overlord and therefore their friend.

Sherwood notes that after Marshall had discussed the difficulties of Overlord, Voroshilov turned to him and said admiringly, If you think about it, you will do it.

On page 791, in discussing the moot question at that time of who was to command Overlord, Sherwood repeats a report that Stalin, in discussions with Roosevelt, made evident his conviction that no wiser or more reassuring choice than Marshall could be made.

It is noteworthy that the brusque, cynical Stalin exhibited fondness for no other American at Tehran with the single exception of Hopkins, with whom he had a personal acquaintance dating from Hopkins' visit to Moscow in August of 1941 upon an errand which must have gratified the tyrant's heart.

Khrushchev's rise was far from inevitable.

He initially ranked behind Malenkov, Beria, Molotov, and Voroshilov.

And as Taubman writes, quote, virtually no one in the USSR or abroad imagined that Khrushchev had a chance of besting them all.

Yet, two and a half years later, Beria had been arrested and executed, Malenkov demoted, and Molotov subjected to withering criticism.

This would come much, much later during the Khrushchev thaw.

The leaders who inherited power after Stalin were themselves, as I mentioned, implicated in the terror.

Klement Voroshilov had been complicit in the killing of tens of thousands of Soviet military officials.

Beria had directed mass repression during the Great Terror period.

And you know, people drop in.

Voroshilov, who's going to become a loyal supporter of Stalin, he's often there.

Other commissars or men who will become commissars, uh, also go there and spend, uh, their evenings there.

And they, uh, also adopt a, a young lad whose father has been killed in the Civil War, or he was killed in a plane crash actually, I think.

Budyonny wound up leading his cavalry in several decisive victories against the various White Armies.

Kliment Yefremovich Voroshilov, or Voroshilov as I hear it often pronounced in English, is a name with which I imagine some of you are already familiar, as he wound up being a critical figure in the Stalinist leadership of the party and country.

But his origins in life and party work could not be more humble.

Voroshilov was born in 1881 to a railroad worker's family.