Russia at war

by Alexander C Werth

  importance.

  There were then some partisan leaders, such as M. Gurianov, whose men killed about 600

  Germans, but who himself was captured and hanged by the Germans and posthumously

  awarded the title of Hero of the Soviet Union. Another partisan leader, Solntsev, was publicly hanged at Ruza, in the Moscow province, on December 21, 1941.

  Altogether, in the winter of 1941-2, the 10,000 partisans taking part (in their own way) in the Battle of Moscow, are credited with having destroyed 18,000 Germans.

  It was not till May 30, 1942 that, on the initiative of the Central Committee, the Stavka created in Moscow a "Central Staff of the Partisan Movement" and, later in the year, similar special "Central Staffs" for the partisans of the Ukraine and Belorussia. The partisan movement certainly grew in 1942, though it had not yet become the mass

  movement it was to be in 1943. The slowness of the development was at least partly

  attributable to the shortage of arms. The personnel and supplies that Moscow could send the partisans by air in 1942 were still very limited, and many partisan units had to be left entirely, or almost entirely, to their own devices, like raiding German arms dumps and depending on the more or less voluntary help of the peasantry.

  Telpukhovsky readily admits that German policy in the occupied areas enormously

  stimulated the partisan movement, notably in suitable "partisan country" like many parts of Belorussia or the Orel-Briansk forest zone. The régime of terror in the cities, the mass deportation of young people to Germany, which began as early as March 1942, deeply

  affected the civilian population.

  Obvious parallels for this can be found elsewhere; thus, in France, the biggest factor that swelled the ranks of the maquis was the introduction of forced labour in Germany. In Russia, the Untermensch treatment meted out to the population acted as an additional incentive to fight the Germans by joining the partisans. But, as in France, the number of effective partisans was inevitably limited for a time by the shortage of arms.

  It would be idle to speculate about what motives were the most important in persuading people to take the desperately dangerous step of joining the partisans—pure disinterested patriotism? injured national pride? a desire to get away from the Germans and their

  oppression and deportations? an attachment to the Soviet régime and to Stalin, now

  identified more than ever with the idea of "Russia"? All these motives mattered, but their order of importance obviously varied from place to place. Much is made in present-day Soviet histories of the leading role played in all partisan activity by the Party—all the way from the Central Committee in Moscow to the clandestine party obkoms and raikoms (provincial and district committees) still operating in the German-occupied areas and to party members who were commanders of the various partisan units.

  At the same time, there is a tendency to minimise the role played in the partisan

  movement, especially in Belorussia, by the officers who, though encircled by the

  Germans in 1941, had evaded capture and went on fighting as partisans instead.

  We shall later deal with some specific cases of partisan activity in 1941, 1942 and 1943; but Telpukhovsky claims that as early as the summer of 1942 the partisans tied up

  "enormous numbers" of German troops and police (either German, allied, or mercenary); that in the Briansk area alone 30,000 Hungarian troops were used for fighting the

  partisans and that in the summer and autumn of 1942, the partisans in various parts of the Soviet Union had wrecked as many as 3,000 German trains. This sounds like an

  exaggeration.

  In September 1942, when things looked blackest in the south and south-east, Stalin issued a special order to the partisans saying, that, with German rail and road communications now longer and more vulnerable than ever, it was immensely important to start blowing up railways, bridges and trains; it is probable, therefore, that these big wrecking activities began towards the end of 1942, rather than in the summer.

  1942 saw the development of "partisan regions"— partizanskie kraya—where there were no Germans and where the partisans had, in most cases, re-introduced the Soviet régime.

  Such "partisan regions" were to be found in the northern (wooded) parts of the Ukraine, in large parts of Belorussia, in the Briansk forests, in the Orel province where 18,000

  partisans (belonging to fifty-four detachments) controlled an area comprising 490

  villages; in the Leningrad province and south of it, such as the famous "partisan region"

  round Porkhov. Substantial areas in the Smolensk province were also controlled by

  22,000 partisans belonging to seventy-two detachments. In the winter of 1942-3,

  according to Telpukhovsky, the "partisan regions" accounted for as much as seventy-three per cent of the whole area of Belorussia (a proportion reduced to sixty per cent by the official History.)

  Officially, the "partisan regions" were the "supply bases" for the partisan troops, and, by the middle of 1942, runways began to be built in these and were soon used by planes

  bringing supplies from the "mainland" and evacuating wounded partisans and other persons. Supplies were also amassed locally; thus, on January 1, 1943, in the Baturinsk district in the Smolensk province there were supply dumps amounting to 207 tons of rye, 700 tons of potatoes and 1,000 head of cattle.

  There is no doubt that by the autumn and winter of 1942 the partisans played an

  important part in wrecking the long lines of German communication to the Stalingrad

  area; we know, for instance, that the Manstein offensive of December 12 had been

  delayed by the slowness—caused by partisan action—with which military supplies were

  reaching the Don country.

  Nevertheless, the partisans did not become an enormous mass movement until after Stalingrad. There was now an additional incentive to joining the partisans: the near certainty of fighting on the winning side and of not dying in vain. This was a motive which some partisans of older standing were later to treat with some bitterness. There was also the simple fact that in 1943 most of the partisan units were well-supplied by Moscow; they now had mortars and even heavy guns, including special anti-tank guns for destroying locomotives, more adequate food supplies and, very important, medical

  supplies. One of the horrors of the early days of the partisan movement was the almost total lack of medical supplies, which condemned many of the even lightly-wounded to

  death.

  According to Telpukhovsky, "the partisan movement began to expand enormously after the Red Army had begun its Stalingrad counter-offensive". In this connexion he quotes the following significant figures for the largest partisan area, Belorussia:

  February 1943, 65,000 armed partisans

  June 1943, 100,000 armed partisans

  October 1943, 245,000 armed partisans

  December 1943 360,000 armed partisans

  In the Ukraine, by the end of 1943, there were 220,000 armed partisans, and "many tens of thousands" in the parts of the RSFSR (i.e. Russia proper) still in German hands. Often, he says, whole families, or even entire villages would join the partisans, if only to evade ruthless German punitive expeditions.

  On July 14, 1943, the Soviet Supreme Command ordered the partisans to start an all-out Rail War. Preparations for this had obviously already been made, for on July 20-21 great co-ordinated blows were struck at the railways in the Briansk, Orel and Gomel areas, to coincide with the Russian offensive against Orel and Briansk following the Kursk

  victory. During that night alone 5,800 rails were blown up. Altogether, between July 21

  and September 27, the Orel and Briansk partisans blew up over 17,000 rails.

  In Belorussia the partisans did even better. Between January and May, even before the official Rail War had begun, they had derailed 634 trains. On August 3, the partisans started another great wrecking operation on the Belorussian railways
, two-thirds of which were put out of action, sometimes for weeks on end. Thus, the Molodechno-Minsk

  railway was blocked for ten days. Altogether, between August and November, 1943, in

  Belorussia:

  200,000 rails were blown up;

  1,014 trains were wrecked or derailed;

  814 locomotives were wrecked or damaged;

  72 railway bridges were destroyed or damaged.

  The Germans became increasingly alarmed by these developments. On November 7,

  1943, Jodl admitted that in July, August, and September that year there had been 1,560, 2,121 and 2,000 railway-line explosions (Streckensprengungen) respectively; and these, he said, had had a great effect on military operations and the withdrawal of troops

  (Räumungstransporte).

  Telpukhovsky's semi-official History claims that in three years (1941-4) the partisans in Belorussia killed 500,000 Germans, including forty-seven generals and Hitler's High-Commissioner Wilhelm Kube (who, as we know from German sources—though the

  Russians for some reason don't mention this—had a partisan time-bomb put under his bed by his lovely Belorussian girl-friend).

  In the Ukraine, according to the same writer, the partisans killed 460,000 Germans,

  wrecked or damaged 5,000 locomotives, 50,000 railway wagons, 15,000 automobiles,

  etc. Some of these figures, especially the total of nearly one million Germans killed by the Belorussian and Ukrainian partisans, sound distinctly exaggerated.

  According to Telpukhovsky and other official and semi-official Soviet histories, "all the main work of the partisans" was directed by the Party. In the parts of Belorussia still occupied by the Germans in early 1944, there were 1,113 primary party organisations in partisan detachments and brigades, 184 clandestine territorial party organisations,

  including nine obkoms (provincial committees), and 147 town and district committees (gorkoms and raikoms). The membership of all these had risen during the war from 8,000

  to 25,000. The number of party members among the Ukrainian partisans in 1943 was

  14,000, and there were 26,000 komsomols—i.e. only about fifteen percent of the total number of partisans; the proportion of party and komsomol members among the

  Belorussian partisans was even lower, if anything. Among the Belorussian partisans, we are also told, there were 1,500 Poles, 107 Yugoslavs, 238 Czechs and Slovaks, and some Rumanians and Italians, and even "many Germans".

  The official Soviet thesis is that, especially since the autumn of 1942, there was the strictest co-ordination between Moscow and the Army Command on the one hand, and

  the partisans on the other. The latter wrecked trains, blew up railways, killed German garrisons, etc., as part of a general plan, the main lines of which were laid down by Moscow.

  Up to a point, this is true. The military effectiveness of the partisans grew enormously once they began to receive supplies, officers, etc., from the "mainland". But this version of the partisan story, making the partisans out to be a sort of Second Red Army fighting in the enemy rear, grossly over-simplifies the human aspects of the Partisan Drama. For it was drama. The partisans were not like an army that was methodically supplied with

  food, medical care and arms, and which had an enemy in front of it, and nowhere else.

  There are two recent books, one on the Kaluga and Briansk partisans, Narodnyie mstiteli

  —"The People's Avengers"—by V. Glukhov (Kaluga, 1960), and another, much bigger book published by the Belorussian Academy of Sciences at Minsk in 1961, called Iz Istorii partizanskogo dvizheniya v Belorussii, 1941-4 ("From the History of the Partisan Movement in Belorussia"), the latter consisting of forty-five "memoirs" written by leading participants of the partisan war in Belorussia.

  [There are, of course, countless other books on the partisans, starting with Vershigora's famous People with a Clear Conscience on the Ukrainian partisans, published in 1948, and Ivan Kozlov's book on the partisans and the communist underground in the Crimea

  (V Krymskom Podpoliye, 1950), but many of them; are more romanticised than these two recent books.]

  Both books are very badly written and put together; they are hideously repetitive, and some of the exploits described are almost worthy of the Baron von Münchhausen; and

  yet, the very repetitive-ness of the themes, and a variety of small details explain more fully than the much smoother official histories the constant nervous strain, the helpless suffering and the frequent horrors of partisan warfare. One of the main obsessions of the partisans was something scarcely known to the regular Red Army: the constant look-out for traitors and the physical and psychological need to kill them—such as starostas, burgomasters and policemen appointed by the Germans. There are several accounts in

  Glukhov's book of the hanging of traitors and of raids on the police stations of the German-recruited Polizei.

  Another constant worry was the attitude of the peasantry who kept them, more or less willingly, supplied with food and who, in doing so, were exposing themselves and their families to the most savage reprisals by the Germans—regular troops, SS, SD, etc.—or their underlings—Vlasovites, Cossacks, German-hired police, and so on. For if, as

  already said, there was one Oradour in France and one Lidice in Czechoslovakia, there were hundreds in the Soviet Union.

  Living conditions among the partisans were nearly always terrible, at least until the beginning of 1943, when they began to receive considerable supplies from the

  "mainland". More terrifying even than the shortage of arms and food was the lack of medical supplies. There is a reference to this in the reminiscences of F. G. Markov, commander of the Vileya Partisan Unit, who was one of the first partisan leaders in

  Belorussia. He began to fight as a partisan in August, 1941.

  I should like to make a brief but affectionate mention of those humble and modest doctors who, in incredibly difficult conditions, without any instruments or medical

  supplies or even bandages, still managed to save the lives of hundreds of partisans. I particularly want to mention Dr Podsedlovsky, Dr Moisei Gordon and his wife,

  Noema Borisovna Gordon, Dr G. D. Mogilevchik, Dr I. V. Vollokh and others.

  [ Iz istorii partiz. dvizh. v. Belorussii, p. 282.]

  This quotation is also interesting in another respect: most of the partisan doctors

  mentioned appear to be Jews, which is in striking contrast with the virtual lack of any reference to Jews taking part in the partisan war—despite the very large Jewish

  population in Belo-russian towns like Minsk, Gomel, Pinsk, Vitebsk, etc.

  [One of the few references to Jewish partisans is to be found in Ehrenburg's Memoirs. He met in Lithuania, in 1944, a partisan band of 500 young Jews (men and women) who had escaped from the Vilno ghetto. (Novyi Mir, No. 3, 1963).]

  Did most of the Jews not even try to escape their fate, or did the partisans not want them?

  Or were they—apart from these few doctors—already wholly isolated—or dead—by the

  time the partisan movement got into its stride?

  The first partisan units were formed in the occupied parts of the RSFSR and in Belorussia in 1941 in a variety of ways. Thus, one of the first partisan units formed at Polotniany Zavod near Kaluga lasted from October 11, 1941, to January 19, 1942. It was first

  composed of an anti-paratroop "destroyer" battalion; then it was joined by escaped Russian war prisoners; during the three months of the Battle of Moscow, it attacked

  German road columns. Finally, betrayed to the Germans by a traitor, it was more or less exterminated.

  No doubt some of the partisan stories in the Glukhov book read rather too much like

  Cowboys-and-Red-Indians stuff. It was all very well for the partisans to attack a German headquarters and break up their Christmas party with a few hand grenades; but it was often the villagers who suffered most from such escapades:

  On January 17, 1942, in the village of Vesniny,
there was a rough engagement

  between partisans and Germans. The Germans lost a few dozen men, killed or

  wounded. But they then started encircling the village. The partisans, having run out of ammunition, pulled out. The Germans then took their revenge. In two days 200

  people, mostly women and children, were shot.

  [Glukhov, op. cit., p. 38]

  Similarly, other villages suspected of partisan sympathies were dealt with with special savagery. At Rasseta 372 people were killed; at Dolina, 469, again mostly women and

  children.

  [Ibid., p. 87.]

  The deportation of villagers and the shooting of villagers by the Germans, ostensibly for

  "partisan sympathies" is an ever-recurring theme. In the Kaluga province alone, 20,000

  civilians were shot, according to this book. Near Briansk, in the Ludinovo and Dyatkovo districts the Germans (and Hungarians) killed, up to November 1942, 2,000 civilians and burned down 500 houses. 5,000 civilians were deported as slave labour. Owing to this

  "scorched earth" policy, the Briansk partisans had a particularly hard winter in 1942-3.

  But with supplies coming from the "mainland" in the spring of 1943, things began to look up for them, and, in the following summer, the Briansk partisans were preparing for their all-out Rail War. As the Red Army was approaching Orel, they also issued "last

  warnings" to "traitors" (there are facsimiles of the leaflets in Glukhov's book)—the starostas, burgomasters, Russian policemen and "legionaries" (apparently Vlasovites), giving them a last chance to turn their weapons against the Germans by joining the

  partisans. Some, but not very many, did. (Many, not unnaturally, suspected a trap.)

  More harrowing even than the numerous "Oradours" and "Lidices" in the Kaluga-Orel-Briansk provinces, described in Glukhov's book, are those destroyed in the Osveia and Rossony districts in northern Belorussia in March 1943. This was partisan country; and although the German punitive expedition failed to trap the partisans, they occupied for a time the Osveia district. When, after forty days' fighting, the partisans returned to their base, they found that the Germans had burned down 158 villages. All able-bodied men