ABSTRACT
In January 1937 Stalin began to reorganize both the naval high command and the defence industry. The Commissariat for the Defence Industry under M.M. Kaganovich, brother of the Politburo member L.M. Kaganovich, was transferred from the Commissariat for Heavy Industry and took over responsibility for the Office of Shipbuilding under the Deputy Commissar R.A. Muklevich. At the same time Orlov became a Deputy Commissar for Defence, responsible for naval affairs. The two men met in their new positions for the first time on 28 January 1937 to outline the work to be done and, by April, the new plan for the shipbuilding industry was ready. But before they could present their plan, they fell victim to the ‘Yeshovshchina’, Stalin’s purges against the Army and Navy officer corps.1
