>>...arguably, the cream of the Russian officer corp ended up dead or in the gulag.
My heart goes out to the Russian people trapped in this system - but there's an obvious advantage coming to any potential military opponents (e.g. us).
Given Putin's... idiosyncratic view of Russian history (look at a transcript of the Carlson interview) he may or may not be aware that Stalin's decapitation of his officer corps lead to Barbarossa. I'd guess that he does, but thinks that he can do it better than ol' Joe.