There is such an anecdote, allegedly told by Stalin's bodyguard, Major Alexei Rybin. Once Iosif Vissarionovich was informed that Marshal Konstantin Rokossovsky was seen arm in arm with the beautiful actress Valentina Serova and asked for instructions on what to do with such, they say, moral decay. Stalin smacked his pipe, blew out a ring of smoke and said:
- What will we do, what will we do … We will envy!
This bike has received several interpretations. In some of them, Stalin is informed that Rokossovsky has almost a harem of "field-field" wives at the front, consisting of medical personnel, signalmen, cooks, etc., and he changes them almost every day. In others, the same "debauchery" is attributed to General of the Army Ivan Chernyakhovsky.
The source of the gossip also varies. Somewhere the name of the informer is not mentioned, someone says that he was the head of the Main Political Directorate of the Red Army, Alexander Shcherbakov, someone - that his predecessor in this post Lev Mekhlis, and some (in the case of Chernyakhovsky) - as if the chief General Staff Alexander Vasilevsky.
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Personal life of Georgy Konstantinovich Zhukov did not go well. Back in 1929, he was tried on the party line for factual bigamy and was reprimanded. Moreover, they were obliged, under pain of resignation, to end relations with Maria Volokhova (who gave birth to a son from Zhukov) and live with Alexandra Zuykova. The marriage with her was formalized, however, only in 1953.
Meanwhile, as Zhukov himself later admitted, he had not been in a relationship with Alexandra since 1941. That is, since the beginning of the war. In October 1941, lieutenant of the medical service Lidia Zakharova appeared in the life of the future marshal of victory. She was assigned to Zhukov in the state, as the commander of the front, as a personal paramedic. The relationship between Zhukov and Zakharova was widely known to the marshal's entourage. They continued after the war, until 1948, when they stopped after another party trial, this time at the level of the Central Committee, caused by the denunciations of Alexandra Zuikova (civilian wife, at that time!). The strong-willed and brutal marshal did not dare to make the final choice in the benefit of the woman who loved him.
Not all "field romances" ended immediately after the war. Marshal Ivan Konev, married to Anna Voloshina, was on bad terms with his wife before the war. At the front, he had a nurse Tonya. In the end, Konev did not stop before divorcing his first marriage and officially registering a relationship with a front-line girlfriend.
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Former front-line driver of Zhukov, Alexander Buchin, said that the marshal strictly monitored the morals of his subordinates, forbade any acquaintances, for example, with signalmen, so that there were no omissions in the service. As for himself, Zhukov, when there was already an opportunity, sharply dismissed all attempts to interfere with his personal life. This was after the complaint of his wife to Khrushchev. But Zhukov then already held the post of defense minister and personally made a blow to the party organization of the hospital, where his new passion, Galina Semyonova, worked. Here, however, it eventually came (but after the resignation) to divorce and registration of a second marriage.
There is information that Zhukov extended his bans on "immoral" not only to service personnel, but also much higher, to the level of army commanders who were under his command. In February 1945, Zhukov sent a note to the commander of the 1st Guards Tank Army, Colonel-General of Armored Forces Mikhail Katukov, in which he demanded to end cohabitation with the "baba" (as the marshal put it), threatening otherwise to "withdraw her" with the help of SMERSH organs.
This is where the anecdote about Stalin, which was mentioned at the beginning, is appropriate. If there is a grain of truth in him (and there is no smoke without fire), then the leader, obviously, was much more tolerant of his marshal toward "going to the side" of his subordinates.
After the war, Katukov nevertheless married his front-line friend, the guard foreman of the medical service, Ekaterina Ivanova. But, apparently, at that moment he temporarily sent her away, out of harm's way. I knew that Zhukov’s word and deed did not differ.
