Mikhail Viktorov

Mikhail Vladimirovich Viktorov was a Soviet naval officer who rose to become professional head of the Soviet Navy before he was destroyed in the Great Purge. He was born on 24 December 1893 (Old Style; 5 January 1894 New Style) in Yaroslavl, in the Russian Empire, the son of a military officer. He was educated at the Naval Cadet Corps in Saint Petersburg and commissioned in 1913. He began service as a junior officer in the Baltic Fleet of the Imperial Russian Navy and spent the First World War in that fleet, serving on capital ships and taking part in Baltic operations against Germany.

After the revolutions of 1917 he remained with the fleet and accepted Soviet authority. In 1918 he took part in the Ice Cruise of the Baltic Fleet, the transfer of warships from Helsingfors to Kronstadt under severe ice conditions so that they would not fall into German hands. During the Russian Civil War he held a succession of operational and staff posts in the Baltic. In 1921, after the Kronstadt uprising, he was appointed commander of the Baltic Fleet at a very young age and held that command until 1924. He then commanded the Black Sea Fleet from 1924 to 1926, after which he served in inspectorate and other senior naval posts.

In 1932 he was sent to the Soviet Far East as commander of the Naval Forces of the Far East, the formation that developed into the Pacific Fleet, and oversaw the early build-up of Soviet naval strength in the Pacific amid rising tension with Japan. In August 1937, after the arrest of previous naval leaders, he was appointed Chief of the Naval Forces of the Worker-Peasant Red Army, making him the professional commander of the entire Soviet Navy. He held that office only a short time.

Viktorov was arrested in April 1938 during the mass repression of the Soviet high command. Accused of belonging to an anti-Soviet conspiracy, he was condemned by the Military Collegium of the Supreme Court of the USSR and shot on 1 August 1938. He was posthumously rehabilitated on 23 November 1956. His career and death are representative of the former Imperial naval officers who rose quickly in the Soviet service in the 1920s and were largely annihilated in 1937–1938.