Boris Shaposhnikov member of political party Communist Party of the Soviet Union
Shaposhnikov was one of the few Red Army commanders with formal pre-revolutionary military training, and in 1921 he became 1st Deputy Chief of Staff of the Army's  General Staff, where he served until 1925. He was appointed commander of the Leningrad Military District in 1925 and then of the Moscow Military District in 1927. From 1928 to 1931 he served as  Chief of the Staff of the Red Army, replacing Mikhail Tukhachevsky, with whom he had a strained relationship. He was then demoted to command of the Volga Military District from April 1931 to 1932 as a result of slanderous accusations (made by an arrested staff-officer) of belonging to a clandestine organization. In 1932 he was appointed commandant of the Red Army's Frunze Military Academy, then in 1935 he returned to the command of the Leningrad region. In 1937 he was appointed as Chief of the General Staff, in succession to Alexander Ilyich Yegorov, a defendant of the Case of Trotskyist Anti-Soviet Military Organization secret trial during Joseph Stalin's Great Purge of the Red Army. In May 1940 he was appointed a Marshal of the Soviet Union.Despite his background as a Tsarist officer, Shaposhnikov won the respect and trust of Stalin. Due to his status as a professional officer, he did not join the  Communist Party until 1939. This may have helped him avoid Stalin's suspicions. The price he paid for his survival during the purges was collaboration in the destruction of Tukhachevsky and of many other colleagues. Stalin showed his admiration for the officer by always keeping a copy of Shaposhnikov's most important work, Mozg Armii (Мозг армии, "The Brain of the Army") (1929), on his desk. Shaposhnikov was one of the few men whom Stalin  addressed by his Christian name and patronymic. Mozg Armii has remained on the curriculum of the General Staff Academy since its publication in 1929.Fortunately for the Soviet Union, Shaposhnikov had a fine military mind and high administrative skills. He combined these talents with his position in Stalin's confidence to rebuild the Red Army's leadership cadres after the purges. He obtained the release from the Gulag of 4,000 officers deemed necessary for this operation. In 1939 Stalin accepted Shaposhnikov's plan for a rapid buildup of the Red Army's strength. Although the planned changes remained incomplete at the time of the Axis invasion of June 1941, they had advanced sufficiently to save the Soviet Union from complete disaster.
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