Tension also existed due to the special privileges enjoyed by commanding officers. Unlike privates, commanders received an additional food ration called doppayok, which included a can of meat, a piece of butter, a package of sugar, and good quality tobacco or even cigarettes.24 Privates respected only those officers who shared their additional rations with them. An additional privilege was introduced in April 1942, when commanders from the company level up, as well as their deputies, were ordered to have ordinartsy (orderlies or batmen)—privates who were their personal servants. 25 As a result, a disrespected or cruel officer was always at risk because he could be easily shot by his own men in combat, when the killer could not be identified, or else left wounded and unattended on a battlefield.26 Apparently, the cases Beria singled out were unusual because the perpetrators subsequently deserted to the enemy.
In answer to Beria’s suggestions, on June 24, 1942 Stalin signed an extremely strong GKO Decision on the persecution of family members of all traitors, military and civilian, who had been sentenced to death under Article 58-1a (even in absentia) by tribunals or the OSO.27 The included crimes were: spying for Germany and its allies; changing sides; aiding the German occupiers; participation in the punitive organs or administration established by the Germans in the occupied territories; attempted or intended treason. Now the relatives of the condemned (chsiry) were automatically arrested and sent into exile for five years on the decision of the OSO. As for cases of killing commanders, Beria sent a new instruction to the OO heads at the fronts:
1. Each terrorist act against commanders and political officers in the Red Army and Military-Marine Fleet committed by a private or a low-level commander must be carefully investigated. Persons who commit a terrorist act must be shot to death in front of their units, like deserters and servicemen with self-inflicted injuries. The decision [to execute] must be authorized by the head of the OO. A special record on the execution of the guilty serviceman should be written.
2. The local NKVD office in the territory where the relatives of the executed person live must be informed via a ciphered telegram to take the appropriate legal measures against them.28
No information is available on how many servicemen were executed following this instruction, but these and similar instructions remained in effect after the UOO became SMERSH in 1943.
Notes
1. Zvyagintsev, Voina na vesakh Femidy, 558.
2. M. Delagrammatik, ‘Voennye tribunaly za rabotoi,’ Novyi mir, no. 6 (1997) (in Russian), http://magazines.russ.ru/novyi_mi/1997/6/delagr.html, retrtieved September 6, 2011.
3. NKVD report, dated January 1, 1945; quoted in Nikita Petrov, Istoriya imperii ‘GULAG.’ Glava 12 (in Russian), http://www.pseudology.org/GULAG/Glava12.htm, retrieved September 6, 2011.
4. Abakumov’s report to Stalin, dated December 21, 1945. Page 25 in L. Ye. Reshin and V. S, Stepanov, ‘Sud’by general’skie,’ VIZh, no. 11 (1992), 24–27 (in Russian).
5. Details of the case in Nikolai Smirnov, Vplot’ do vysshei mery (Moscow: Moskovskii rabochii, 1997), 73–84 (in Russian).
6. Lidiya Golovkova, Sukhanovskaya tyur’ma. Spetsob’ekt 110 (Moscow: Vozvrashchenie, 2009), 96–97 (in Russian).
7. Beria’s letter to Molotov, dated November 23, 1938. Document No. 66 in Istoriya stalinskogo GULAGa. Konets 1920-kh–pervaia polovina 1950-kh godov. Tom 2. Karatel’naia sistema: struktura i kadry, edited by N. V. Petrov, 151–2 (in Russian).
8. Evgenii Gnedin, Vykhod iz labirinta (Moscow: Memorial, 1994), 70–76 (in Russian).
9. Ibid., 70.
10. Alexander Dolgun with Patrick Watson, Alexander Dolgun’s Story: An American in the Gulag (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1975), 116.
11. Gnedin, Vykhod iz labirinta, 71.
12. Lidiya Golovkova, ‘Pytochnaya tyur’ma Stalina,’ Novaya Gazeta, no. 136, December 7, 2009 (in Russian), http://www.novayagazeta.ru/data/2009/136/23.html, retrieved September 6, 2011.
13. Gnedin, Vykhod iz labirinta, 76.
14. For the conditions and treatment of prisoners in this hospital, see NKVD Order No. 00913, dated July 31, 1945. Quoted in Petrov, ‘Istoriya imperii “GULAG.” Glava 12’.
15. Golovkova, Sukhanovskaya tyur’ma, 146–50.
16. Details in Smirnov, Vplot’ do vysshei mery, 119–26.
17. Timoshenko’s words quoted in V. V. Beshanov, God 1942—’Uchebnyi’ (Minsk: Kharvest, 2003), 220 (in Russian).
18. Recollections of Anastas Mikoyan, in G. Kumanev, Govoryat stalinskie narkomy (Smolensk: Rusich, 2005), 66 (in Russian).
19. From a protocol (transcript) of Levchenko’s interrogation, quoted in V. A. Bobrenev and V. B. Ryazantsev, Palachi i zhertvy (Moscow: Voenizdat, 1993), 220 (in Russian).
20. Kuznetsov’s Directive No. 621/sh, in Zvyagintsev, Voina na vesakh Femidy, 257–8.
21. Beria’s report to Stalin No. 1066/B, dated June 18, 1942. Document No. 223, in Lubyanka. Stalin i NKVD–NKGB–GUKR ‘Smersh.’ 1939–mart 1946, edited by V. N. Khaustov, V. P. Naumov, and N. S. Plotnikova, 349–50 (Moscow: Materik, 2006) (in Russian).
22. Vasil’ Bykov, ‘Za Rodinu! Za Stalina!,’ Rodina, no. 5 (1995), 30–37 (in Russian).
23. Vasil’ Bykov, ‘Dolgaya doroga domoi,’ Druzhba narodov, no. 8 (2003) (in Russian), http://magazines.russ.ru/druzhba/2003/8/bykov.html, retrieved September 6, 2011.
24. Ye. S. Senyavskaya, 1941–1945: Frontovoe pokolenie. Istoriko-psikhologicheskoe issledovanie (Moscow: Institut Rossiiskoi Istorii RAN, 1995), 112 (in Russian).
25. Stavka’s Directive No. 004235, dated April 9, 1942.
26. David Samoilov, ‘Lyudi odnogo varianta. Iz voennykh zapisok,’ Avrora, no. 1–2 (1990), 66–67 (in Russian).
27. GKO Order No. 1926ss, dated June 24, 1942. Document No. 224, in Lubyanka. Stalin i NKVD, 350–51.
28. NKVD Instruction No. 1237, dated June 27, 1942. Document No. 994, in Organy gosudarstvennoi bezopasnosti, 3 (1), 577.
CHAPTER 12
Special Tasks of the OOs
In addition to finding traitors and spies among the troops, Abakumov’s men were charged with some general tasks such as clearing regions near front lines of the local civilian population, organizing barrage units behind the fighting Soviet troops—the role of osobisty and later SMERSH officers most hated by Russian veterans—and vetting former POWs.
Civilian Casualties
In 1941, the OOs were involved in ‘cleansing’ regions near the front lines—that is, clearing out the local Russian population. Stalin ordered the troops to show no consideration for civilians caught up in military actions. In November 1941, he advised the commanders of the Leningrad Front: ‘While moving forward, do not try to take over a particular place…[but instead] raze built-up areas to the ground and burn them down, burying the German staffs and units hiding there. Leave any sentimentality aside and destroy all built-up areas in your path. This is the best course.’1
Four days later the Stavka (Stalin and Shaposhnikov) ordered the destruction of villages in the enemy rear:
1. All built-up areas in the German rear located in a 40–60 kilometer zone from the front line and 20–30 kilometers to the left and right of the roads must be destroyed and burned down.
To destroy the built-up areas in this location, aviation should be sent in immediately; intensive artillery and mortars should also be used…
3. During enforced retreats of our units in various parts [of the front line], the Soviet locals must be taken with the troops, and buildings in all built-up areas must be destroyed, without exception, to prevent the enemy from using them.2
A directive of the Military Council of the Western Front ordered the OOs to take charge of enforcing the eviction of civilians: ‘All citizens who resist eviction must be arrested and transferred to the NKVD organs… This order is to be executed by local officials and Special Departments of the formations and units.’3
Stalin’s cable (paragraphs added) to the leaders of the defense of Leningrad illustrates his callous attitude toward his o
wn countrymen:
To: Zhukov, Zhdanov, Kuznetsov, Merkulov
There are rumors that the German scoundrels, while marching to Leningrad, are sending old men and old women, along with younger women and children, ahead of their troops as civilian delegates from the occupied regions with a request to the Bolsheviks to surrender LENINGRAD. There are also rumors that among the Leningrad Bolsheviks are people who think that arms should not be used against such delegates.
In my opinion, if such people do in fact exist among the Bolsheviks, they should be the first to be destroyed because they are more dangerous than the fascists. My advice is: do not be sentimental, kick the enemy and its supporters, whether they volunteered to be human shields or not, in their teeth. War is implacable, and those who are weak or hesitant are the first to be defeated.
If one among us hesitates, he will be the main person guilty of the downfall of Leningrad. You must destroy the Germans and their delegates, no matter whether they volunteered or not, and kill the enemies. There should be no mercy toward the German scoundrels or their delegates.
I ask you to inform the commanders and commissars of all divisions and corps about this, as well as the Military Council of the Baltic Fleet and commanders and commissars of ships.
September 21, 1941 J. Stalin4
Most of the evicted civilians were doomed to die. In July 1942, the German Secret Field Police reported from the occupied territory: ‘Refugees from the areas of military actions… frequently eat peculiar bread consisting of rotten potatoes from the previous season mixed up with moss and garbage… Many times we found the corpses of female refugees who had died of hunger. It is not surprising that under these circumstances refugees join partisans or begin stealing and robbing while moving around alone or in groups.’5
Between 15 and 17 million Soviet civilians died during the Great Patriotic War.6 Apparently, the evicted persons constituted a high percentage of this number.
Teenagers were special OO targets. In December 1941, Nikolai Selivanovsky, OO head of the Southwestern Front, who would later be Abakumov’s first deputy in SMERSH, ordered that ‘all teenagers appearing at the front line and in the rear who do not have parents, or have lost their parents’ were to be detained and questioned.7 These teenagers were suspected of being German agents. Three weeks later the acting chief USSR prosecutor approved the death sentence for treason and espionage for Soviet citizens aged 16 and older.8
Inevitably, the entire population of ethnic Germans living in the Soviet Union became suspects. During 1942, all ethnic German males aged 15 to 55 and females aged 16 to 45 were ‘mobilized’ (in fact, arrested) for work in the ‘labor battalions’ supervised by the NKVD.9 On October 14, 1942, the GKO ordered that the same measures be applied to all nationalities with whom the Soviet Union was in a state of war—Romanians, Hungarians, Italians, and Finns. All such people were considered a potential ‘fifth column’.
Barrage Units
The cruelty of Stalin’s draconian orders could not prevent soldiers from retreating in 1941, and the OOs and the newly created NKVD barrage units (zagraditel’nye otryady or, for short, zagradotryady; literally, ‘fence detachments’), which belonged to the OOs, were tasked with preventing retreats and desertions. These units are remembered with deepest hatred by literally every war veteran who fought at the front line and survived. As during the war with Finland, the barrage units were usually positioned behind the fighting troops, firing on them until they turned around if they started to retreat. In June 1941, OO barrage detachments also scoured the roads and train stations near the front lines for deserters.10 From July 19, 1941, barrage units grew until the divisional and corps OOs had NKVD barrage platoons, an army OO had a company, and an OO directorate of the front had a barrage battalion. On October 31, 1941, Abakumov’s deputy Milshtein reported to Beria:
From the beginning of the war until October 10, 1941, the NKVD Special Departments and the NKVD Barrage Units for Guarding the Rear detained 657,364 servicemen who detached from their units or deserted from the front.
Of them… Special Departments captured 249,969 men, and… NKVD Barrage Units… captured 407,395 servicemen.
Of those, 632,486 men were sent back to the front…
By decisions of Special Departments and military tribunals, 10,201 men were shot; of that number, 3,321 men were shot in front of their formations.11
By October 1942, 193 NKVD barrage units were operating at all fronts. Grigorii Falkovsky, a former infantryman, recalled in 2008 the death of his friend, Naum Shuster, at the beginning of the Battle of Kursk in July 1943: ‘A zagradotryad was stationed behind our backs… A few soldiers scrambled out of the first row of our just-destroyed trenches trying to save themselves from the [German] tanks, and rushed toward us. My friend Naum Shuster was among them. He ran straight toward a lieutenant, a member of the zagradotryad. And when Naum was within three meters of him, the lieutenant shot Naum point-blank with his handgun, firing directly into Naum’s forehead. Naum died instantly. This scoundrel killed my friend!’12
In addition to these OO units, Stalin ordered that each rifle division have a barrage unit, ‘a battalion of reliable soldiers’.13 Soldiers called these units ‘rear outposts’, ‘covering forces’, or even ‘Mekhlis’s men’. A survivor from the Western Front recalled: ‘They shot everybody who did not have a special permit to leave the front line, and sometimes even those who had the permits, but didn’t have time to show them.’14
Barrage units were unable to stop the defeat of troops encircled by the enemy. In mid-1942, possibly the worst situation was in the 2nd Shock Army at the Volkhov Front, where the barrage units were formed in April 1942.15 By June 1942, many detachments of this army were completely cut off from supplies. Later, the head of the front’s OO reported to Abakumov that in June ‘there were days when servicemen received no food at all and some died of hunger. Zubov, deputy head of the political department of the 46th Division, detained Afinogenov, a private of the 57th Rifle Brigade, who had cut a piece of flesh from the corpse of a dead Soviet soldier for food. Afinogenov died of exhaustion on the way’.16 More likely, he was shot on the spot because there was no mercy for cannibals. On July 11, 1942, 2nd Shock Army commander Andrei Vlasov was taken prisoner while trying to get through the enemy encirclement. This was the same Lieutenant General Vlasov who soon began the creation of the Russian Liberation Army (ROA) under German control. Contrary to Vlasov, Aleksandr Shashkov, head of the OO of the 2nd Shock Army, committed suicide rather than be taken prisoner.
The NKVD rear guard troops also could not stop the wave of deserters at the Volkhov Front and in nearby areas. In September 1942, the deputy head of the NKVD Directorate of the Leningrad Province complained to Moscow in a report with the long title ‘On the Inadequate Supervision of the Barrage Service of Field Units and NKVD Troops Guarding the Rear of the Northwestern and Volkhov Fronts and the 7th Separate Army’:
As a result of the decreased attention of the Special Organs [OOs] of the field detachments and headquarters of the NKVD Troops… the number of deserters recently increased in the rear of front units.
The regional NKVD organs and militia [police] arrested 381 deserters in 1942…
Deserters are leaving their units with arms, documents, and horses and they even steal vehicles. In the forests in the rear of the troops, deserters are building comfortable dugouts where they can live for a long time. They are robbing [the local population], and are real bandits. Upon detection and during arrests they are putting up armed resistance.17
Nikolai Nikoulin, an infantry veteran, explained in his memoirs how the whole punishment system worked before, during, and after attacks:
The troops used to attack while being galvanized by fear. Facing the Germans with all their heavy machine guns and tanks, [and enduring the] horrific mincing-machine-like bombing and artillery shelling, was terrifying. But the inexorable threat of being shot to death [by our own side] was no less frightening.
To keep an amorpho
us crowd of poorly trained soldiers under control, shootings were conducted before a combat. Some weak, almost dying soldiers, or those who had accidentally said something anti-Soviet, or, occasionally, deserters, were used for this purpose. The division was formed into the shape of the [Russian] letter ‘П’, and the doomed were slaughtered without mercy. As a result of this ‘prophylactic political work’, the fear of the NKVD and commissars was deeper than the fear of the Germans.
And during the attack, if somebody turned back, he was shot by the barrage detachment. Fear forced soldiers to move forward and be killed. This was exactly what our wise [Communist] Party, [supposedly] the leader and organizer of our victories, was counting on.
Of course, shootings to death also continued after an unsuccessful combat. And if regiments retreated without an order, barrage detachments used heavy machine guns against them.18
Barrage units existed until October 1944.
Vetting POWs
In August 1941, Stalin ordered commanders, political commissars, and OOs at the corps and division levels to write up lists of servicemen who ‘had surrendered to the enemy’, and to send these lists to the General Staff.19 This was a preparation for the fil’tratsiya (vetting; literally, ‘filtering’) of Soviet servicemen who had been POWs or had been encircled by German troops.
Three months later, in December 1941, the GKO ordered the setting up of special NKVD camps to assist in vetting ‘former Red Army servicemen who were captured or surrounded by the enemy’.20 From 1941 to 1942, twenty-two of these camps were organized, and the officers of the OO, and later SMERSH, conducted the interrogations there. The vetting procedure in the NKVD Podolsk Camp near Moscow in 1944 was described by Junior Lieutenant Roman Lazebnik in a 2008 interview:
Smersh: Stalin's Secret Weapon: Soviet Military Counterintelligence in WWII Page 24
