Grigory Kulik - Command Style

Command Style

Kulik was a notoriously abusive and ineffective commander and bureaucrat, wildly erratic and unpredictable in his actions and considered by even his colleagues to be a "murderous buffoon", albeit one who bore Stalin's official approval. He championed a bizarre personal command motto he dubbed "Jail or Medal"; those under his command were either showered with (usually unearned) awards and decorations if he favored them, or simply arrested and sent to the Gulag on trumped up charges if he did not. He would also shout his command motto at his subordinates during meetings as a form of motivation if he felt they were on the verge of displeasing him. While this was, in many ways, typical behavior for Stalinist bureaucrats, Kulik's heavy-handed influence on the critical arms factories and design bureaus he controlled resulted in great disruption to Soviet production when whole technical committees and factories were arrested en masse on his whim and replaced with personal cronies from his power-base in Leningrad.