Modern Russian, as well as earlier anti-Stalinist Soviet historiography, evaluates the results of Stalin's purges in the Red Army from 1937 to 1938 as follows: ... out of five marshals, three were executed. None of the five army commanders survived. Not a single first-class army commissioner survived the purge. All twelve second-class army commanders were buried, ... . In total, forty thousand great military leaders lost their lives in the purges .... Furthermore, historians argue that: ... the defeat of the Red Army in 1941 is a direct consequence of the purges. In 1941, the remaining Soviet commanders lacked the necessary experience, as they had been in their positions for at most one year ... Viktor Suvorov, however, poses a provocative question in his books: "How could it be that less than twenty percent of men with epaulettes ended up before firing squads, yet in 1941, the MAJORITY of commanders had less than a year of experience in their roles ...?"
