Useful corollary would be to stop taking any self-celebration so naively. It is not like his autobiography was the only one where a person celebrates himselfs and ads himself a credit.
Who is on the other side of the controversy?
If we want heroes then it should be the poor guys who have to go to battle for no payoff and often loss of life or limb.
Historically, casualties in war were far higher than they've been lately, so successful military leaders USUALLY were lauded for their ability to not bring home friendly troops in bodybags repeatedly. Now, I'm not even sure we've seen them accomplish that. With a few exceptions they are mostly energetic, charismatic, yes-men who deliver mediocre results.[1]
Having worked in a 3-star headquarters....flag officers are definitely cut from a different cloth, personality-wise, even compared to many of the Colonels I've worked for directly under them.
>>>If we want heroes then it should be the poor guys who have to go to battle for no payoff and often loss of life or limb.
It's not like we ignore them, almost all medals for valor are awarded to junior ranks (enlisted guys and a few junior officers). As a rough estimate, look at the living Medal of Honor recipients from Iraq & Afghanistan[2]. The only exception in recent memory is maybe the field-grade Marine officer who organized the defense of Camp Bastion[3], and he was given a much lower medal (still, a Silver Star is very impressive).
[1]https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2012/11/general... [2]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_living_Medal_of_Honor_... [3]https://www.stripes.com/news/marine-awarded-silver-star-for-...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lavrentiy_Beria#First_Deputy_P...
"Wanted to liberalize the system" my ass.
Now, Kruschev and the rest of the politburo certainly didn't want to be led by Beria -- they knew Beria was a monster and would eat them alive, so Beria had to go. Of course, if Kruschev had meant to be an uber monster himself once in power, Beria would still have had to go. There's no two ways about it: monsters have to take the competition down.
Beria had less than four months in power, so it's hard to judge how it would have gone from there had he stayed in power as long as Kruschev.
All I know is they were all monsters. Stalin had seen to it that they so be -- they all had to have skin in the game to protect Stalin.
There is another historical view of Zhukov:
- He wasn't the military genius he portrayed himself to be and actually stole the credit for the achievements of other officers. For example he supposedly saved Stalingrad yet was nowhere near it, he came to Halkin Gol when the battle was beginning and didn't credit the staff chief for the excellent planning and so forth.
- He was a Stalin yes-man, and in stark contrast to his autobiography, there is no proof he ever challenged him on any decision. This is what Stalin liked, he needed talented commanders, but also people who will follow his orders to the letter.
- His handling of the Red Army in the summer of 1941 while he was Chief of Staff, was absolutely disastrous. He lost millions of men in ill planned counter attacks. Stalin kept him around because he followed orders (see above).
- Besides being a yes-man, by all unofficial accounts he was a brute and enjoyed humiliating his soldiers and officers. He was often in fights even with other marshals.
- He didn't care much about his soldiers lives, this is why Stalin sent him to capture Berlin as soon as possible.
- He wasn't demoted because of paranoia (he probably wouldn't be alive). He was actually demoted because he allowed his troops to pillage Eastern Germany for months, and took a huge share of the booty. Not that Stalin was particularly humanitarian, but this meant that discipline had become nonexistent.
- Far from being apolitical and not involved in intrigue, he actually participated in a coup against Malenkov and Beria. He almost became the leader of the Soviet Union, however was cleverly outmaneuvered by Khrushchev who put him in retirement.
- His mythos began during the time of Brezhnev, when he needed to rewrite the history of WWII to suit his ends. His autobiography was certainly not written by him, as are its subsequent 15 editions which hilariously contradict each other often. His daughter supposedly finds forgotten pages that just happen to complement the evolving views of Kremlin for over 40 years.