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Grigory Ivanovich Kulik ((ロシア語:Григо́рий Ива́нович Кули́к)) (9 November 1890 – 24 August 1950) was a Soviet military commander and Marshal of the Soviet Union. Kulik was born into a peasant family near Poltava in Ukraine. A soldier in the army of the Russian Empire in World War I, he joined the Bolshevik Party in 1917 and the Red Army in 1918. During the Russian Civil War he become a commander in the Soviet artillery at Tsaritsyn and other battles. In 1937 Kulik became head of the Red Army's Main Artillery Directorate, and remained commander of the Soviet artillery forces until 1941. He was both a sycophantic Stalinist and a radical military conservative, strongly opposed to the reforms proposed by Mikhail Tukhachevsky during the 1930s. For this reason he survived Stalin's Great Purge of the Red Army in 1937-38, and in 1939 he became Deputy People's Commissar of Defense, also taking part in the Soviet occupation of Eastern Poland in September. He led the Soviet's artillery attack on Finland at the start of the Winter War, which quickly foundered under his poor leadership. He was awarded the title of "Hero of the Soviet Union" in recognition of "outstanding services to the country and personal courage."〔''Current Biography 1942'', pp474-75〕 As a close friend of Stalin he was successfully able to convince him to spare upwards of 150,000 Polish prisoners from execution in the Katyn massacre. On May 8, 1940, Kulik was named a Marshal of the Soviet Union, along with Semyon Timoshenko and Boris Shaposhnikov. He had a reputation as an incompetent officer, a "murderous buffoon", and a bully, but his closeness to Stalin put him beyond criticism. He could not protect his wife though, Kira Simonich, who two days before Kulik's promotion had been kidnapped on Stalin's orders. She was subsequently executed by Vasili Blokhin.〔Sebag-Montefiore 293-4, 332〕 ==Civil war== Kulik began his career serving with minimal distinction as a staff artillery non-commissioned officer in the tsarist army. On the outbreak of the Russian Civil War, his friendship with first-generation Bolshevik Kliment Voroshilov caused him to throw his lot in with the Red forces, leading to a personal introduction to Stalin and the command of the artillery of the 1st Cavalry Army (co-led by Stalin and Voroshilov) at the Battle of Tsaritsyn in 1918. The position was almost entirely political in nature, a reward for Kulik's turning coat to the Reds and his loyalty to Voroshilov; Kulik himself had no experience with gun laying or commanding artillery crews, and the whole Bolshevik artillery force in Tsaritsyn consisted of 3 obsolete artillery pieces. Despite having little to no perceivable impact on the outcome of the battle, Kulik's performance somehow greatly impressed Stalin, cementing his political future and putting him largely above criticism for many decades; years later, after his appointment as Chief of Artillery (and following his miserable performance in two separate wars), Nikita Khrushchev questioned his competency, leading Stalin to angrily rebuke him: "You don't even know Kulik! I know him from the civil war when he commanded the artillery in Tsaritsyn. He knows artillery!"〔Sebag-Montefiore, 332.〕 Following the civil war, Kulik continued as one of Stalin's favored and most politically-reliable generals during the 1919 invasion of Poland, which he personally led. His miserable performance led to him being replaced by the former cavalry NCO Semyon Budyonny. Unfazed, Stalin elevated Kulik to the post of First Deputy People's Commissar for Defense under Voroshilov. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Grigory Kulik」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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