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Ukrainian Soviet Republic, Kharkov Governorate.

Dubovyazovka, 15km east of Konotop

1918, the height of the Civil War.

Foreign states have started their intervention into Soviet Russia.

On the night of March 28, German forces attacked Dubovyazovka.

Red Army soldiers could barely contain their offensive.

And when the train car with ammo caught fire from an enemy hit,

the troops simply ran. The squad commander tried to stop them,

but it was no use.

Suddenly, a commissary came out to meet the deserters

with a carbine and shouted: Turn back! I’ll shoot anyone who runs!

The soldiers stopped, then began to return to their positions.

The commissary was Kliment Voroshilov, and it was his first battle.

Songs about the First Red Officer and First Marshal,

as they called Voroshilov, sounded all over the country.

He never sought serious political influence, and that granted him

one of the longest and most successful careers in Soviet history.

Some thought of him as an obedient enforcer of Stalin’s will,

others admired his fearlessness in battle and his talent to lead.

He is an iconic figure of the Soviet era, and his name has become

synonymous with heroism, but it seems that with time, people have

simply forgotten Voroshilov ever existed.

FORGOTTEN LEADERS

Kliment Voroshilov

In Soviet times, hi name was synonymous with heroism.

Songs and books were written about the First Red Officer

and First Marshal. Cities, collective farms and factories were named

after him. He never sought serious political influence,

and that granted him one of the longest and most successful

careers in Soviet history. Some thought of him as a dropout

and Stalin’s puppet, while others admired his fearlessness

in battle and his talent to lead. What was he like, this man

who became one of the symbols of the Soviet era?

Klim Voroshilov was born in the Yekaterinoslav Governorate

of the Russian Empire, now Luhansk Oblast of Ukraine.

His father was a simple railroad worker, and his mother did odd jobs,

not shying away from hard physical labor.

The Voroshilovs had 5 children. One time, when playing

with his sisters, Klim hit his forehead on the corner of the stove.

It left a noticeable scar on his face forever. Years later, when

Voroshilov became an underground revolutionary, that scar

was mentioned in police papers as a distinguishing mark.

Little Klim was forced to grow up early. The father of the family

never held down a job for long because of his unsociable nature.

Whenever he would get fired again, the responsibility of

supporting the family would go to the mother.

The Voroshilovs lived in hunger, and Klim was sent to work

when he was just 6 years old. At first, he shepherded cows,

and then he was given a job at a mine: sorting through the coal

delivered to the surface. This hard labor paid 8 to 10 kopek a day.

Soon, a mechanic noticed the boy’s diligence, and little Klim became

the greaser of the coal machines.

That act of kindness led the boy into misery: a few older boys

afraid of competition beat him savagely.

Klim only woke up several days later in a hospital, with

terrible headaches that would torture him for the rest of his life.

Years later, those closest to People’s Commissary Voroshilov

knew that if he was massaging his temples with his thumbs,

he would soon have a fit of pain.

Klim set foot inside a school for the first time when he was 12,

and he spent two years at his desk. His mother’s dream had come true:

he learned to read and write. He never received any more education.

But thanks to his teacher Semyon Ryzhkov, he developed a passion

for reading. Voroshilov put together a giant library in his life:

12,000 volumes, many rare editions among them. Today, this library

is preserved at the Luhansk Museum of History and Culture.

Memoirs of Colonel General S. Shtemenko, Chief of the General Staff:

Even as soon as when I first met Voroshilov on the way to Crimea,

I could see that he was a well-read man who loved and understood

literature and art. In the evenings, Kliment would normally ask that

I read something from Chekhov or Gogol out loud. It would go on

for an hour and a half, and there was bliss in Voroshilov’s face.

One of the books that found its way to the 17 year old Klim

and completely rocked his world was a copy of the Communist Manifesto

from an illegal typography.

The young worker’s political views formed in just a few days,

and they never changed afterwards. In the early 20th century

Voroshilov joined the Bolshevist wing of RSDRP, and soon became

a member of its city committee.

February 17, 1905. Lugansk. The Russian Empire has been engulfed

in a revolution, and Lugansk workers are protesting as well.

The 24 year old Klim Voroshilov walked into the central office of the

Hartmann Locomotive Works as head of the delegation.

He was holding a list of 29 demands that had just been approved

at a meeting. After a long discussion, director Chrzanowski summed up

Your conditions are excessive, we have nothing else to discuss.

I propose you go back to your work station.

Voroshilov replied firmly: We are not going back

until our demands are met. He was sure that the protests would

soon take hold of the entire city, and he knew perfectly well

how much every idle day cost the management. In the end,

the scared management of the locomotive works made concessions,

and all of the demands of the protestors were met.

But his first arrest followed his first political victory.

Volodya, which was Voroshilov’s Party pseudonym, spent several months

in prison and his case never reached the court. A thousand-strong mob

of workers demanded his release, and the city administration

let the prisoner go out of unwillingness to escalate the situation.

Voroshilov was so popular among the Lugansk workers that

in the spring of 1906, he went to the Party Congress as delegate

from the local Social Democrat organization. The Congress took place

in Stockholm, the capital of Sweden.

Voroshilov wasn’t yet an expert on Marxist theory and couldn’t

always grasp the point of Party discussions. In the evenings,

he would discuss what he had heard with his roommate, losif Dzhugashvili.

From Voroshilov’s memoirs:

It was a short stocky man, about my age, with a dark face

with barely visible pocks on it: probably traces of being sick

with smallpox in childhood. He had incredibly bright eyes,

and he was all a ball of fire, cheerful and happy.

Stalin and Voroshilov became friends quickly, and just as quickly

parted ways when the Congress was over. No one could imagine then

that in the future their fates would be intermixed, and their names

would become history. Meanwhile in Russia, the revolution

that started in 1905 continued. In the cities, battle brigades

were formed in secret from workers, students, and sometimes,

just simple criminals. Bolsheviks were getting ready to new

armed protests and smuggled illegal arms into Russia actively.

A brigade like that formed in Lugansk, as well. To supply it with

arms, Kliment Voroshilov made contact with middlemen from the capital

who introduced him to Finnish suppliers.

They agreed on the price quickly. The main question remaned:

how to transport 60 Braunings, 20 Mausers and a great ammount

of ammo from Finland to St Petersburg?

They decided against the risk of using suitcases.

And that was when Voroshilov proposed to smuggle the weapons

on his person over several trips.

Using a custom-made belt, he fixed several pistols under his shirt

along with small ammunition pouches. At first it seemed comfortable,

but by the time he had reached the capital, Voroshilov could barely

move from the weight of his cargo. His back ached, his head hurt.

Even worse, it turned out that the safehouse he was supposed to

"deliver the weapons to was being watched by the police;"

a member of the underground Voroshilov knew managed to

whisper to him about it. He also asked him to wait until morning

when new safehouse would be ready. Voroshilov was tortured by

hunger and exhaustion, but he had to spend the night in the street.

The next day he went to Finland for another batch of weapons.

In the end, there was no armed protest that time. But it was in those

days that Kliment Voroshilov chose the fate of a professional

revolutionary for good: there was no going back.

The first Russian revolution over, the workers’ political activity

was in decline.

Voroshilov was arrested again, but this time, no one came to his aid.

Kliment spent several months behind bars, and then, an order came

from St Petersburg: Send Voroshilov to the Arkhangelsk Governorate

to live under overt surveillance from the police.

This exile was unexpectedly happy for him. Voroshilov met his future

wife here. Golda Gorbman was an exiled revolutionary, too,

the young people fell in love and were going to marry.

But there were some problems with the wedding.

Jewish Golda and Orthodox Klim were given a condition:

they could marry by Orthodox rites. Without converting,

it was impossible. So in 1910 Golda was baptized, taking the name

Ekaterina. Since the girl’s family disowned her after the baptism,

Ekaterina Voroshilova only had her husband left.

From that moment, she followed him everywhere: into exile, into safehouses,

from one city to another. They spent decades in love and concord.

The Voroshilovs were in Petrograd at the time of the

1917 February revolution, but Klim didn’t stay long in the capial.

The Party decided to send him to Lugansk with the task of spreading

Bolshevist influence in the local elective bodies.

He would always do great at propaganda.

A letter from Voroshilov to the Central Committee of the Party, 1917:

In Lugansk, not only did we take all the factory committees,

trade unions, the Workers’ Council and peasant deputies,

but even the City Duma… Our workers are more than uplifted…

Socialist Revolutionaries and Mensheviks here

are becoming rarer than flies in the fall.

In October of 1917, Voroshilov was elected t the Constituent Assembly

and returned t the capital. He never got to take part in the meetings:

the Assembly was dispersed. The Bolshevik Party became the ruling one

in one moment. People who were loyal to the new government

were assigned key posts. Thus, Voroshilov became

Chairman of Petrograd Military Committee. Yesterday’s worker turned

into the de facto ruler of the capital.

The city was in chaos. Locals and soldiers returning from the

front lines were looting liquor stores, gangs of robbers

ran wild in the streets, apartments and government institutions

were constantly getting raided. Despite the dire situation,

Voroshilov proposed to do away with criminal investigation.

In an era of supposed triumph of revolutionary legality,

police seemed a useless structure to him.

Like many at the time, Voroshilov believed that there would be

no criminals in the new Russia. He also believed that wars would end

and there would be peace on Earth forever. Reality turned out to be

different. A civil war started in the country.

It was this war that brought Voroshilov international fame and

gave him the reputation of a fearless leader.

By March of 1918, Germany began a military intervention

against Soviet Russia. German forces entered the territory of

the Donetsk-Krivoy Rog Soviet Republic. Voroshilov,

having returned from Petrograd to his lesser motherland,

formed the 1st Lugansk Socialist Brigade out of volunteers.

Donetsk-Krivoy Rog Socialist Republic. Declared in January o 1918

with the capital in Kharkov. In February of 1918, German and Austrian

forces entered the territory of Ukraine upon invitation from the

Ukrainian People’s Republic to defend it from Soviet Russia and

started an intense offensive eastward. By early May of that year,

the territory of Donetsk-Krivoy Rog Republic was fully occupied,

and as such de facto ceased to exist.

In the battles with the Germans, Voroshilov proved to be a brave man

capable of organizing the actions of big numbers of people in

critical situations.

The leadership of the Bolshevist Republic appointed him commander

of the 5th Army.

However, that army lacked weaponry and combat experience to hold back

the German offensive.

On April 27, 1918, Voroshilov ordered his forces to abandon Lugansk

and move towards RSFSR territory, where Germans weren’t allowed to

invade according to the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk. A giant train of

several hundred cars took off towards Millerovo station, which was

220km to the Northeast of Rostov.

Intermingling with the military forces, workers and their families

were leaving their hometowns. They were bringing all of their

possessions with them: feather beds, pillows, samovars,

domestic birds, even calves. There was a German plane cruising

above the train. The passengers got used to it quickly, and

the soldiers would only sometimes shoot their rifles at it.

Having arrived to Millerovo station, Voroshilov realized that

the situation of the 5th Army was catastrophic: his trains

were moving through Don Host territory.

The Almighty Don Host: a state that appeared in the Don region

after an anti-Bolshevik Cossack rebellion in March of 1918.

Cossack forces fought against the Soviet government and

attacked its regiments in the Don and Volga regions.

Voroshilov was to ship carriages full of exhausted

and dispirited people through the territory, which in fact was hostile.

The distance of mere 400km between Millerovo and Tsaritsyn

took Voroshilov's army three months to cross.

They had to beat back White Army Cossack regiments' attacks

and restore dozens of kilometers' worth of destroyed railroads,

rebuild bridges, elevated approaches and dams.

It was only thanks to his dedication and strength of conviction

that Voroshilov managed to maintain order and discipline in the Army

and reach Tsaritsyn with it.

Tsaritsyn, Stalingrad from 1925, Volgograd from 1961. In the times

of the Civil War it was a major industrial center and a transport hub

of the highest importance. In the summer and fall of 1918, the city

was attacked by Chieftain Krasnov, and Bolsheviks gave its defense

special importance.

Stalin assumed overall authority over Tsaritsyn, being the one

responsible for food supplies in the South of Russia.

Old friends met, Voroshilov agreed to head the defense of the city.

But the success of those defensive battles should mostly be attributed

to former Tsarist officers, professional soldiers with whom

both Voroshilov and Stalin had constant conflicts.

Because of that, the two leaders-to-be quarreled with the

Chairman of Revvoyensoviet of RSFSR Leon Trotsky.

They refused to carry out his orders, accusing Trotsky of

bureaucracy and having no understanding of the situation.

He, in turn, rightly accused Stalin and Voroshilov of breaking

military and Party discipline.

At the 7th Congress of the Party in 1919, Lenin criticized Voroshilov

for guerrilla warfare, being unprofessional, unjustified casualties.

The Central Committee of RKP even passed a special resolution

forbidding Voroshilov from assuming any sort of

command capacity in the military.

And still, in July of 1919, he became Commander of the 14th Army.

In just a month, for surrendering the city to Anton Denikin's forces,

he was brought up before the Revvoyensoviet tribunal.

While investigating the case, tribunal members reached the conclusion

that Voroshilov's military knowledge wasn't enough to command

even a battalion. The Army Commanders ignorance was so profound

that, strange as it may be, it served to alleviate his guilt,

and the tribunal restricted itself to only firing Voroshilov.

Voroshilov himself knew he was no military man, he simply lacked

education. But had courage, bravery and the talent to lead in spades.

It is possible that it was due to these qualities that already in

November of 1919, he was made Chairman of the Revvoyensoviet

of the famous 1st Cavalry Army led by Semyon Budyonny.

Revvoyensoviet, Revolutionary Military Council: top collegiate body

of management and political leadership of the Army from 1918 to 1934.

Apart from handling military action in a general manner,

the Revvoyensoviet headed the work of the political department,

the tribunal and counterintelligence organs. Any Commander's order

had to be signed by a Revvoyensoviet member. It could veto the order

and even fire a Commander from his job.

Voroshilov was tasked with handling all logistics and administration:

supplying the army, recruiting regiments, creating the

Command infrastructure from scratch. He also handled morale building

with the cavalry and its leadership.

In the 1st Cavalry Army, guerrilla warfare and looting were ubiquitous

as well as robbing the civilians and violence. The soldiers were not

particularly politically savvy either: many were sure they were

fighting for the Bolsheviks and against the Communists.

To teach some discipline to the soldiers, Voroshilov had to resort to

drastic measures, sometimes even going as far as firing squads.

The soldiers were a little afraid of Voroshilov, but respected him

at the same time, not only for his severity, but also for his bravery.

He would never sit it out at the HQ, he always came to the battlefield

personally atop his battle horse called Mauser.

In one of the battles, when the 1st Cavalry was liberating Crimea from

Wrangel's forces, Voroshilov was riding at the front of a squadron,

and there was a rider galloping at him. He was holding a pike pointed

right at Voroshilov's chest.

He shot at his adversary with his revolver… miss.

At the next moment, he felt a thud…

The pike got stuck in the thick cloak he had on his shoulders.

The White Army man threw away his pike and took out his saber.

It was only because of a shot by Voroshilov's orderly that saved

the life of the future marshal.

June of 1920, Voroshilov was decorated with the Order of the Red Flag,

by December of the same year, he was awarded

personal revolutionary weapons. By the spring of 1921, he became

Commander of the North Caucasus Military District, but he was

uncomfortable with his new position, and in a few months, he wrote

a letter to Stalin:

Dear losif Vissarionovich! I already told you in Moscow about my

intention to change up my line of work, and now, this is my

final decision. I'm sick of working at the Defense Department,

and it's not where the center of influence is anymore.

I suppose that I will be more useful in the civil sector.

Stalin didn't help him, and Voroshilov will only be able to leave

to the civil sector in a quarter of a century. So far,

his military career was taking off. After Lenin's death, Stalin

managed to push his old rival Trotsky from commanding the Red Army.

Frunze became People’s Comissary for the Military, and Voroshilov,

his second-in-command.

Mikhail Frunze, one of the most prominent Red Army personalities

during the times of the Civil War and the first half of 1920.

Forces under Frunze's command defeated the armies of Kolchak,

Wranger, regiments of Ural Cossacks, Petlura and Makhno supporters.

He wasn't part of Stalin's inner circle, and upon replacing Trotsky

in the military brass, he remained an independent player in the Party.

Several months after his promotion, Frunze died at the operating table

during a stomach ulcer surgery. The third People's Commissary

for Army and Navy was Voroshilov.

Frunze's widow Sofia Alekseevna never got over her loss

and killed herself several months later. Frunzes' children

Tatiana and Timur were brought up by their grandmother,

and in 1931, after she died, Voroshilov requested the Politburo

to allow him to adopt his friend's children.

RSFSR, 1932

The Voroshilovs did not have children of their own.

Back in 1918, they adopted the four year old Pyotr and raised him

as if he was their own. Now, they had three adopted children.

Tatiana and Timur Frunze quickly came to terms with their new family.

The Voroshilovs surrounded their foster children with love and care,

and their foster father would lovingly call them Frunzelings.

Timur Frunze, Hero of the Soviet Union, military pilot.

Died heroically in 1942.

Voroshilov's other adopted son Pyotr became a draftsman and

a lieutenant general.

Voroshilov's kindheartedness and openness appealed to Stalin:

he knew betrayal wouldn't ever come from that loyal eager beaver.

All the way until the late 1930s, Stalin and Voroshilov close friends:

they hunted together, took their vacations in the South, spent time

at Stalin's dacha and at his Kremlin apartment.

Voroshilov admitted Stalin's intellectual superiority and,

whenever he had a problem, he would turn to him for advice.

And they were plenty of problems. By late 1920, an ambitious

countrywide war reform was announced, and Voroshilov would regularly

report to Stalin about setbacks and failures in its implementation.

Planes get produced with a plethora of defects, the tank program

suffers from failures, military construction plans get disrupted.

Voroshilov also complained about lack of discipline in the Red Army,

military equipment losses and high casualty rates among the troops.

However, handling the situation would have been hard for anyone.

The USSR still hadn't recovered from the aftermath of the revolutions

and the Civil War. Industry suffered from a lack of equipment,

engineers and qualified staff. Refitting the army was going slowly.

Skilled commanders were in short supply.

The 30s were an era of testing new weaponry types in the whole world.

Designers in various countries proposed more and more new kinds

of tanks and airplanes. But what should those

tanks and airplanes be like? Back then, no one knew the answer.

Multi-turret tanks, wheel-mounted tanks, tanks that could be attached

to airplane wings to be airdropped… Aviation was going through

a boom, too. New materials and engines appeared. With every day,

planes flew higher, farther, faster. To test the reliability and

effectiveness of new machines, time was needed.

Out of a staggering number of new military designs,

the Red Army Command had to choose the most promising ones,

fix their flaws and implement their mass production.

They had to set up ways for the maintenance of those machines,

familiarize themselves with using new tech together with armed forces,

and also to develop the strategy and tactics of using it.

But the more military technology progressed, leaving WWI and Civil War

ways behind, the more obvious Klim's lack of military schooling was.

He was saved by the fact that there were many professionals in

the army brass who knew the art of war: Yegorov, Svechin, Uborevich,

Shaposhnikov, Kuznetsov.

From Marshal Zhukov's memoirs:

It has to be said that Voroshilov, People's Commissary at the time,

was not particularly competent in that role. He stayed a dilettante

in questions of war until the end, and he never knew them

seriously or deeply. But he had a high standing, he was popular, and

he professed being an actual military man and knowing the art of war.

And in practice, most of the work done at the Commissariat

was done by Tukhachevsky, who really was a military expert.

He and Voroshilov would have clashes, and generally,

they disliked each other.

To compensate for his incompetence when it came to the military,

Voroshilov had diligence, personal involvement with the task at hand,

and, as they used to say back then, the talent to organize masses.

He took part in General Committees, Congresses and plena of the Party.

Several cities were named after him: Lugansk became Voroshilovgrad,

Stavropol became Voroshilovsk, and Ussuriysk, Voroshilov.

A heavy tank received the People's Commissary's name: KV,

which stood for Klim Voroshilov.

And the loudspeakers would play the Song of the Soviet Tankmen:

When Stalin sends us into battle, And the First Marshal leads us.

Voroshilov showed off his marksmanship to the troops, and his quote

There are no bad guns, there are only bad marksmen became

a well-known adage.

Thousands of Soviet citizens proudly bore the title

Voroshilov's Marksman, which would be awarded to trainees

during marksmanship training.

But being a good shot couldn't replace the lack of military schooling.

A group of military leaders had gathered around another marshal:

Mikhail Tukhachevsky. They were trying to convince Stalin that

Voroshilov was unfit for the position he held. Voroshilov had his own

supporters, as well. But it was the events of 1937 that resolved this

conflict once and for all.

On May 27, 1937, Tukhachevsky was arrested in Kuybyshev and

charged with espionage, plotting a coup and trying to install a

military dictatorship in the USSR.

The court verdict found Tukhachevsky guilty, and he was

put before a firing squad in June of 1937. But disputes about

his innocence happen to this day. In 1957, Supreme Court of the USSR

overturned his sentence as manufactured, and the Central Committee

cleared Tukhachevsky's name posthumously. But many historians

still publish new proof of Tukhachevsky actually plotting

to stage a military coup.

Moscow, USSR. 1932

A group of high-ranking Soviet officers was arrested along with him,

on the same charges. All arrests were made with Voroshilov's blessing.

Many lists of suspects that the secret police handed to

the People's Commissariat bore notes from the Marshal:

To Comrade Yezhov. Pick up all of the scum... Arrest him. ”

Often Voroshilov would write: Leave him alone for now, or

Call him in for a talk.

It was those resolutions like those that saved the lives of future

WWll heroes Marshal Malinovsky, General Petrov and General Lukin.

The number of officers arrested in 1937 through 1938

cannot be counted exactly and, according to different estimates,

ranges from 7 to 11 thousand. An even bigger number was fired.

Over 400 high-ranking commanders were shot by firing squads,

many were sentence to time in the penal colonies.

By the summer of 1941, about 1\3 of the fired commanders

returned to the Army.

The first real test for People's Commissary Voroshilov was

the Soviet-Finnish War that started in November of 1939.

The Red Army, enjoying a massive superiority in numbers and tech,

suffered several defeats, many regiments got surrounded

and suffered heavy casualties.

Those failures are often attributed to the witch hunts of 1937

and arrests of the army brass. There were other reasons besides that:

weak morale among the troops and lack of schooling among the command.

The army was just learning to use the new machines in the conditions

of contemporary warfare, the quality of soldiers' training stayed low.

It was only in February, after regrouping and fortifying,

a successful Soviet offensive began. In March of 1940 Finland

was forced to sign a peace treaty.

Despite victory in that war, Voroshilov was let go from the post

of People's Commissar for Defense. On March 28, 1940, there was a

Supreme Military Council session and a Central Committee plenum,

where the People Commissary presented his report and received

devastating criticism.

But his political career was practically intact afterwards.

Voroshilov became Assistant to the Sovnarkom and

head of Defense Committee. Just one year remained before the start

of the Great Patriotic War…

Just how unprepared the Red Army was to a war with the Third Reich

became obvious in the first hours after the German forces crossed

the Soviet border.

In July 1941, Voroshilov was appointed Commander of the entire

Northwest Strategic theater forces. After that, he headed

the Leningrad defense force. But an attempt to halt the German

offensive on Leningrad led to a siege starting in September.

September 11, 1941. The Germans had been attacking Krasnoye Selo

foor three days in order to break through to Leningrad.

The 60 year old Kliment Voroshilov went to the front lines,

where a brigade of marines was attacking the German positions.

The fascists were counterattacking.

Voroshilov watched the battle as shells and landmines exploded nearby.

When the guard captain suggested that he retreat to shelter,

the Marshal just waved him away…

He still had no shortage of courage. But courage alone was not enough

to defend Leningrad. On September 13, 1941, the Stavka,

unhappy with Voroshilov's actions on Leningrad front, recalled him.

When saying his goodbyes to the HQ workers, he said:

The High Command is recalling me… Serves this old man right.

Voroshilov didn't command any troops since then. In October of 1941,

he was entrusted with assembling reserve regiments behind front lines.

On September 6, 1942, the post of Chief of the Central Headquarters

of the Partisan Movement was introduced. Soviet Marshal Voroshilov

received that post.

From May of 1943 he was head of the Trophy Committee.

Retreating, Hitler's forces would leave behind tens of thousands of

cars, tractors, artillery guns, tanks, rifles and machine guns.

Among the responsibilities of the Trophy Committee was collection

and inventory of abandoned enemy vehicles and provand.

It was Voroshilov who was Chairman of the committee in charge of

creating a new anthem of the USSR in wartime. On January 1, 1944,

Soviet citizens heard these famous lines for the first time:

United forever in friendship and labor,

Our mighty republics will ever endure.

On the day of the victory, the Marshal was at his post of

Chairman of the Supervisory Commission that was in charge of

liberated Hungary. The war was over, peacetime began.

Retaining his job as Assistant to Chairman of the Government,

Voroshilov became Chairman of the Bureau of Culture. Now,

you could encounter people other than generals in Voroshilov's office:

film directors, actors, musicians and painters.

From as back as 1930s the Marshal was considered an unofficial patron

of painters: he would help them get workshops, provide them with work.

Among them were Mitrofan Grekov, Aleksandr Gerasimov, Isaak Brodsky.

Voroshilov had his own art collection. Most of it burned at his dacha

in a fire that the Marshal's 10 year old grandson accidentally started.

Besides art, Voroshilov took interest in sports. He would state:

Those who do not have regular exercise can be likened to a person

who consciously decided to get old by the age of 45.

Kliment himself would ice skate, ski, swim, play gorodki

even after turning 50. Knowing of Voroshilov's enthusiasm about sports,

Stalin put him in charge of that sphere as well after the war.

On February 17, 1946, Kliment Voroshilov came to the Dinamo Stadium

on invitation from the head of the Sports Committee Nikolai Romanov.

For the first time in his life, the Marshal watched a game of a sport

yet unknown in the Soviet Union: Canadian hockey.

Voroshilov watched the game with passion, laughed, shook his head.

What he liked the most was that you could have a fight,

and then only be penalized with a two-minute suspension.

After the match, Marshal declared: Canadian hockey is a Russian game.

We'll train and then we'll beat the Canadians, too!

In 10 months, the first games of the Soviet ice hockey cup took place.

After the war, Voroshilov would often appear together with Stalin.

He would stand next to him at official parades and receptions,

they would walk arm-in-arm on the blue screen and in paintings.

Aleksandr Gerasimov's painting Stalin and Voroshilov in the Kremlin...

the original of which is kept at the Tretyakov Art Gallery,

is one of the symbols of the Soviet era.

From Gerasimov's notes:

I was thinking about Stalin and Voroshilov, and I had an idea

that I should paint them as personifications, one symbolizing

the Red Army, and the other, all peoples.

But the leader's opinion of Voroshilov changed over time,

and Stalin would trust him with less and less.

And the Marshal would call his secretary and ask in humiliation:

Could you please find out if I'm allowed to the Politburo session?

With time his role became fully symbolic. A week after Stalin's death

Voroshilov was made Chairman of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet.

Technically he became the Soviet head of state. In practice, all power

belonged to 1st Secretary of the Central Committee Nikita Khrushchev,

Voroshilov only handled representative functions and foreign visits.

Meanwhile, a conflict was brewing in the higher echelons of the USSR.

In June 1957, the so-called Anti-Party Group led by Molotov, Malenkov

and Kaganovich tried to replace Khrushchev, who proved to be stronger.

The members of the group were expelled from the Central Committee,

and then, from the Party. Voroshilov was part of the Anti-Party Group,

but his punishment was more lenient: Khrushchev scolded the Marshal,

and Voroshilovgrad its old name back.

This city has a strange history. In 1970, after Voroshilov's death,

it was renamed to Voroshilovgrad again, and 20 years later still, it

it became Lugansk once more. Just as strange is Voroshilov's own tale:

he is practically the only leader of USSR who managed to avoid being

punished, deservedly or not, for the crimes he possibly committed.

Voroshilov never had any high-reaching ambitions, he never

took interest in Party intrigue, and he always came out unscathed

out of any trouble. Maybe he was always saved by his loyalty and

the dedication he would approach his orders with even if

he was not up to the job, or maybe he was simply saved by his bravery:

he was never afraid of the firing squads of 1937

nor of party penalties in the Khrushchev years.

The only thing to really become a heavy blow to Kliment Voroshilov

was the death of his wife in 1959. The Voroshilovs never got to

celebrate the golden anniversary of their wedding, which was only

a few months away. He didn't know his wife had had cancer for years.

When Ekaterina became ill, Kliment would spend days on end

at her bedside and sing her favorite songs of the time of their youth.

And then she was no more.

One year after his wife's death, Voroshilov resigned as

Chairman of the Presidium Supreme Soviet,

and later he quit Politburo as well.

The winter of 1969 was near. The Marshal was 88.

One night, he started to feel unwell, and his family proposed

to call an ambulance immediately. But Voroshilov adamantly refused.

In the morning, he put on his parade uniform and, after calling a car,

he went to the hospital himself, fully decorated.

In a few days, on December 2, 1969, Kliment Voroshilov passed away.

He was buried next to the Kremlin wall, and the first person to lay

a wreath on his tomb was the new leader of the country,

General Secretary of the Central Committee of KPSS Leonid Brezhnev.

8 years before Kliment Voroshilov's death, at the 22nd Congress,

the question of Voroshilov's responsibility for Stalin era purges

was raised. The former People's Commissary didn't want to

root around in the past, but he admitted his guilt.

In his memoirs written towards the end of his days, Voroshilov

mentions his friend and patron Joseph Stalin warmly.

He continued to consider Stalin a great historical figure.

And great people, Voroshilov supposed, made great mistakes.

Kliment Voroshilov himself never became a prominent politician.

He got to demonstrate his natural courage in the battlefield,

not the halls and corridors of big politics. Just like his friend

and comrade-in-arms Semyon Budyonny, who only survived him by 4 years.

For the longest time, radios and TV sets in the Soviet Union would

play the Budyonny March, his march together with Voroshilov.

Budyonny is our buddy, everyone's with us,

Our orders are too keep our dukes up and to keep looking ahead.

After all, Voroshilov's with us, the First Red Officer,

We'll manage to shed blood for the USSR.