Death in Return for Dedication

Among the Soviet military commanders in World War II there were few, if any, tsarist officers who joined Soviet Russia’s army in the wake of the October coup. It is commonly believed that officers who voluntarily joined the Red Army of Workers and Peasants were killed during the general pogrom of the military in 1937-1938. In reality, over 3,500 former officers had been exterminated much earlier, in 1930-1931.

General Yaroslav Strombach, a native of Czechoslovakia, was one of these officers. Last year marked the 110th anniversary of his birth. In the valley of the River Eger, which flows down from the high Krkonose (Giant) Mountains in the Czech highlands and empties into the Elba, lies the town of Louny, where Yaroslav Strombach was born on July 10, 1894, into the family of a print shop owner.

As a boy he mastered the violin and when he grew up, he began to help his father in the family business. Influenced by the newspapers that were published in the family print shop, he joined the labor movement. He would not develop a revolutionary consciousness for several more years, but the spirit of dissent had already captured the young man’s thoughts. During his studies at a commercial academy in the town of Plzen he came under the political influence of Social Democrats. The academy’s administration restricted students’ involvement in politics. When the famous liberal Tomasz Masaryk, then leader of the Czech Popular Party, who would soon be elected Czechoslovakia’s president (1918-1935), visited the town, the academy’s students were specifically forbidden to meet with him. Besides violating the ban, young Strombach reported on his meeting with the Czech Popular Party leader at a gathering of the local Social Democratic cell. Understandably, this upset the directory of the academy, who insisted that the young man’s father remove him from the school. Yaroslav then enrolled in a commercial academy in Prague. As he wrote later, “I dreamed of never following in my father’s footsteps.” This caused many disagreements in the family. The father wanted to expand his business in the capital and did everything in his power to involve his only son in his business.

When the First World War broke out, Yaroslav Strombach was called up to the Czech army. After basic military training he was sent to the eastern front as part of an infantry corps, where he fought against his fellow Slavs. In September 1915 he, along with many other soldiers, was taken prisoner by the Russian army. Early the following year he joined the Czechoslovakian Legion, which the tsarist government formed from Czech and Slovak POWs and subsequently expanded into a corps. As a noncommissioned officer, he served in a unit that was part of the Russian army reserve stationed outside the town of Sarny, now in Ukraine’s Rivne oblast.

The February revolution of 1917 took him somewhat by surprise. It brought quite a few changes to the political mood of the volunteer soldiers. Strombach was appointed platoon commander and elected to head the company committee, and later became a member of the regiment and brigade committees. He followed the political events in his homeland closely. Russia received Tomasz Masaryk, head of the Czechoslovakian National Council. Established in Paris, the council was a kind of national government in exile. In April 1917 Masaryk organized the Kyiv congress of deputies from Czech and Slovak volunteer military divisions of Russia, which subsequently formed the Separate Czechoslovakian Army Corps.

At the congress of military deputies he began to “breathe the Bolshevik air,” as Yaroslav Strombach put it, i.e., he adopted the ideology of the Bolshevik soldiers, who were instrumental in sparking a dramatic change in his political outlook. The Czech published several belligerent articles. After the Bolsheviks staged the October coup, the Czechoslovakian Corps kept its allegiance to the previous Russian government. As a result, it was turned over to the Czechoslovakian National Council, which obtained permission from the new Russian government to evacuate the corps to France via Siberia and Vladivostok. The Czech section of the Communist Party’s Central Committee asked Yaroslav Strombach to recruit soldiers for the new Russian army from the Czechoslovakian legions: he knew the Czech military and many of them were personally acquainted with him. Strombach agreed. He selected Penza as his new duty station, where he worked intensively to recruit soldiers from among Czechoslovakian troops stationed at the railway terminal. On instructions from the Supreme Command a disarmament commission was formed, and Strombach was appointed commander of a newly formed military unit of Czechoslovakian internationalists. Strombach’s fellow countrymen tried their best to talk the Czech commander into returning home with the last troop train. He was guaranteed instant promotion to officer rank at the headquarters of the Czechoslovakian Corps, with the added bonus that he would be returning to his “free and democratic” homeland. Convenience, however, wasn’t one of Strombach’s priorities. Instead, he was becoming involved with the Red Army that was just being created.

During the Christmas holidays in 1918, Yaroslav Strombach was appointed commander of a unit called the Czech International Platoon. It entered Saratov after the provincial government announced that the city was in danger to suppress a mutiny staged by the leader of the Orenburg Cossack Government, Ataman Aleksandr Dutov. The multinational platoon was renamed the First International Regiment of Penza. Among its fighters were Czechs, Germans, Slovaks, Hungarians, etc. There were over 250 international platoons in Russia during the Civil War. At the time of the Uralsk offensive Yaroslav Strombach was appointed commander of the recently formed division of Ural regiments, and shortly thereafter he became the commander of the Novo-Zensk Division.

By the time the German forces launched their offensive in the Baltic republics, Strombach was commander of the newly formed Third Brigade of the Eleventh Rifle Division. He fought outside Reszyce (now Rezekne, Latvia), Mytava (now Jelgava, Latvia), and as part of a military group outside Verro (now Viru, Estonia). When his regiment was carrying out a battle maneuver in the cold spring weather, Strombach and 6 reconnaissance troopers had to swim across a flooded river. He survived the crossing and even managed to preserve his treasured party ticket and a photograph of his bride-to-be. The military leadership offered to reward him with a gold watch or 5,000 rubles from the Estonian Labor Republic. He accepted the latter, since he needed the money for his upcoming wedding.

Later Yaroslav Strombach received an urgent order to come under the command of the commander of the Southern Front, O. Yegorov, who was stationed outside Orel. The Czech internationalist’s brigade took part in the Voronezh-Kastornoe operation against a White cavalry corps commanded by General Konstantin Mamontov. In the fall of 1919 Strombach’s units clashed with the cavalry led by A. Shkuro, commander of the Caucasian Corps of the Armed Forces of South Russia. Strombach’s brigade suffered a defeat, and the commander was recalled to Penza. En route he contracted typhus and after his recovery he was sent to the Don. By this time the brigade’s headquarters were stationed outside Ust-Medveditskoye (now Serafimovich, Volgograd oblast), where he fought against the forces of Nestor Makhno until envoys brought news of a truce with the Ukrainian rebels.

In the spring of 1920 Strombach was seconded to the command of the 11th Army of the Red Army of Workers and Peasants that was stationed in the Transcaucasus and appointed commander of the 54th Military Brigade. That same year an uprising of the Dashnak Armenian Revolutionary Federation (ARF) began in Zangezur. The meembers of the local Armenian National Socialist Party (Dashnaktsyutun), who were fighting for the Armenians’ liberation from the Turkish yoke with the help of Western nations, were also planning to separate Armenia from Soviet Russia. The uprising quickly spread to other regions. To suppress the uprising the 11th Army organized the Zangezur assault force, and the brigade commanded by Strombach was part of the 3rd Assault Column. The fighting was extremely violent.

For the offensive on Tyflis (now Tbilisi, Georgia) the army command formed a group that also included the 54th Brigade. Its task was to occupy the Yagludzha Ridge and Kodzhori Heights, which blocked the approaches to Tyflis. Troops in the central battle element, including the 54th Brigade, occupied the heights and held their positions until the end of February 16, 1921. However, dispersed ARF units captured ground outside Novo-Bayazet (Armenia). It was on this stretch of land that Red Army units of the Bayazet direction, commanded by Yaroslav Strombach, occupied their positions. Because of heavy snowfall and snowdrifts up to 3 feet deep, many soldiers suffered severe frostbites. All of this made combat difficult. The units had orders to capture fortified positions on the mountain heights, which were occupied by the enemy. The decisive battle began early on February 24. Fierce fighting took place for the church of Shavnabad, the Mountain Signalnaya, and the heights, identified on the map as 1046. In order to occupy the heights, brigade troops had to scale the steep hills, virtually drowning in the deep snow. The enemy launched counterattacks, but the Red Army units attacked repeatedly. The enemy was using local elite troops to defend the heights. After a nighttime offensive, at 8 a.m. the following day Commander Strombach informed army headquarters that 1046 had been captured. The enemy forces fled in disorderly retreat. For his able command of the brigade Strombach was awarded the highest military decoration in the Soviet Army — the Order of the Red Banner.

At the end of the military operation, in April 1921 Strombach was appointed to head the 18th Cavalry Division and was instructed to move his military units to Perm via Baku and across the sea. Invited to attend the Third Congress of the Communist International as part of the delegation from the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia, Yaroslav Strombach traveled to Moscow.

That same year Strombach received permission for a two-month vacation and left for his homeland, accompanied by his wife Nina Ivanivna, who was working in the public education system and was pregnant with their first son.

The Czech emigrant had joined the Russian Communist Party (Bolshevik), RKP(b) in 1918. In October of that year the Czechoslovakian Republic proclaimed its independence (it officially recognized the USSR only in 1934). The Czech Popular Council thus passed a resolution announcing that the former refugee Strombach was now outside the law. At the border crossing Yaroslav Strombach was met by his father, who was now an influential Czech patriot. Strombach and his wife arrived at his father’s home in August 1921. Local political forces received the Soviet guest warily and held meetings outside his family home. When Strombach met with Czechoslovakia’s Foreign Minister Eduard Benesz (1918-1935), the latter urged Strombach to remain in his homeland. While he considered the matter, he was called up to the Czech army, where he served for nearly a month. His first son was born in his native northwestern Bohemia. The Strombach family eventually had three children.

Throughout the centuries, the ideas of freedom, equality, and brotherhood had been uppermost in people’s minds. However, the rapid pace of revolutionary changes in Russia in 1917 did not mean that building a new state system would be easy, even though such prospects generated a fair measure of hope in the 1920s, so much so that people were even prepared to fight for them. The architects of the “new” state set about state-building task. The hero of this article, along with his many fellow thinkers, did not have a good understanding of politics at the start of the 20th century. Yaroslav Strombach was raised in a close-knit Slavic country; he had displayed courage during the Civil War and had not even celebrated his 30th birthday. Ultimately, he decided to return to the USSR.

From then on his life was linked with Ukraine. From January 1922 he served in the Reconnaissance Department of the Red Army of Workers and Peasants, but administrative work did not appeal to him. From 1923 he served as deputy commander of the 23rd Division and from 1924 as commander of the 7th Division and chief of the Vinnytsia garrison. Eventually he became commander of the 44th Rifle Division and chief of the Zhytomyr garrison. This division was famous for the fact that in 1919 it was commanded by Mykola Shchors, in whose honor it was named after his death. Strombach headed the division’s command at a difficult time. The Moscow military command had recently expressed its dissatisfaction with the division and proceeded to replace the division and corps commanders. Soldiers admired Strombach despite his strict character. Even though he kept to himself, he was very different from the previous commanders whom local military specialists characterized as “boors.”

Because of his personal qualities, the 9th-11th Congresses of Soviets elected Strombach as a member of the All-Ukrainian Central Executive Committee; he was a member of the Volyn Okruha Committee of the Communist Party and member of the Zhytomyr City Hall presidium. As it turned out, however, his dedication to the young state was not enough: Strombach was arrested in 1930 as an active member of the so-called “Spring Case.”

According to a theory proposed by the OGPU (state secret police), former tsarist officers and emigres, along with the “rotten intelligentsia” and kulak elements, had plotted a new intervention, which they usually did every spring. Fabrications about the upcoming spring produced the codename “Vesna” [Spring], short for “the military officers’ counterrevolutionary organization.” The 2002 issues of the journal From the Archives of the All-Ukrainian CheKa — GPU — NKVD — KGB reveal that the Spring Case was distinguished by its Union-wide scope and political nature. Since it concerned the military sector, it was also recognized as a turning point in the relationship between the Soviet regime (which was becoming totalitarian) and the old military intelligentsia.

As we know, the future “leader of the peoples of the USSR” viewed preventive repressions as the most effective means of countering potential threats. In March 1926 the chiefs of personnel departments of military units received official “tip-offs” about “organizations” consisting of former participants of the “Volhynian Insurgent Army,” which had been uncovered in Zhytomyr okruha. By that time the party had unshakable trust in the actions of its investigators.

It is worth noting that the file of the 44th Division commander does not contain an arrest warrant or any of the standard questionnaires. The case begins with a February 28, 1931, order to begin the investigation. Perhaps Yaroslav Strombach could not endure the “conditions of imprisonment,” for he admitted to having cooperated with Czechoslovakian intelligence, an agent whom he saw once in his life and didn’t even remember. He was accused of “heading a military counterrevolutionary organization of officers at the Zhytomyr garrison.” These accusations were supported by testimony given by representatives of the Ukrainian Military District leadership: former deputy commander and chief of staff S. Biezhanov and his deputy S. Ivanovsky. Mass arrests in connection with this case began in late February 1931. Shortly afterward Biezhanov added his testimony, alleging that the “chief of staff of the Red Army of Workers and Peasants, Boris Shaposhnikov,” was also involved in the conspiracy.

It is also worth noting that memos, testimonies, and statements of defendants in the Spring Case were regularly sent to Moscow, where Joseph Stalin personally reviewed them. After receiving these materials, on March 13, 1931, Stalin brought the Red Army chief of staff face to face with his accusers, in the presence of Molotov, Voroshylov, and Ordzhonikidze. During the confrontation Shaposhnikov refuted the accusations with his characteristic firmness. Under these circumstances the Ukrainian stooges “admitted” to being the leaders of an “organization for an all- Ukrainian armed mutiny.” According to their statements, the “organization” embraced virtually all of Ukraine. They “exposed” commanders in 14 regions, and the OGPU readily reported that all of them had been arrested. The newly hatched organizers of the mutiny claimed that Strombach’s 44th Rifle Division, among others, was planning to side with the peasants in their uprising.

The persecution of Czech nationals had a national coloration. At the time the Zhytomyr garrison was located in a frontier area of Ukraine. The division commander used to host his parents here. Several villages in Zhytomyr okruha were home to Czech national colonies, from which the local military garrison recruited young men. Provincial commanders and the highest Ukrainian military command knew about this. This enabled investigators to claim that Czech intelligence was operating in the area. Thus, in January 1931 V. Balytsky, the head of the State Political Department of the Ukrainian SSR, reported in Moscow about the progress of the ongoing investigation into the Spring Case: “...further investigation into the case of the Union-wide Organization of Military Officers has established the following: former 44th Division commander Strombach was interrogated in my presence and with the participation of Comrade Yakir and was brought face to face with an intelligence resident at Czech headquarters, and he stated that in addition to passing a number of key mobilization documents, his task was to allow the enemy unimpeded passage at the start of the intervention so as to prevent the timely mobilization of the Kyiv garrison.”

Could anyone hesitate after these words? In February 1931, Yaroslav Strombach was expelled from the Communist Party. Despite his merits, the OGPU council sentenced the brave internationalist to the maximum penalty, execution by firing squad. The former 44th Division commander was executed in Kharkiv at 2 a.m. on May 27, 1931.

The Spring Case was so blatantly falsified that even certain OGPU officers believed that the cases against these ranking military figures were exaggerated and fabricated, and they questioned the prisoners’ confessions and sworn statements. However, instead of seeking the truth, on August 6, 1931, the Politburo of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party (Bolshevik) passed a decree to replace those OGPU officers who had dared to express disagreement. In the summer of 1931 the organs of the State Political Department reported to the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Ukraine that the Spring Case produced 2,014 convictions resulting in the arrests of 305 military personnel and 1,706 public figures. Strombach’s fate was shared by 27 other officers and 546 civilians. All the other suspects were immediately transferred to other units, sent to labor camps, or deported. According to researchers, the mass arrests of 1930-1931 resulted in the deportation of at least 10,000 former Russian officers. As a result, after spring 1931 the USSR was left with a handful of officers who had received professional military training in pre-revolutionary Russia. The Spring Case paved the way for a new wave of mass repressions against the military in 1937-1938.