 However , during Stalin 's Great Purge in the late 1930s , which was still partially ongoing at the start of the war in June 1941 , the officer corps of the Red Army was decimated and their replacements , appointed by Stalin for political reasons , often lacked military competence . Of the five Marshals of the Soviet Union appointed in 1935 , only two survived Stalin 's purge . 15 out of 16 army commanders , 50 out of the 57 corps commanders , 154 out of the 186 divisional commanders and 401 out of 456 colonels were killed , and many other officers were dismissed . In total , about 30 @,@ 000 Red Army personnel were executed . Stalin further underscored his control by reasserting the role of political commissars at the divisional level and below to oversee the political loyalty of the Army to the regime . The commissars held a position equal to that of the commander of the unit they were overseeing . But in spite of efforts to ensure the political subservience of the armed forces , in the wake of Red Army 's poor performance in Poland and in the Winter War , about 80 percent of the officers dismissed during the Great Purge were reinstated by 1941 . Also , between January 1939 and May 1941 , 161 new divisions were activated . Although about 75 percent of all the officers had been in their position for less than one year at the start of the German invasion of 1941 , many of the short tenures can be attributed not only to the purge , but also to the rapid increase in creation of military units . 
