Classes of Partisans

As a result of its diverse elements the Soviet partisan movement developed a mass of sharp, internal tensions. The situation thereby produced perhaps can best be understood if it is viewed for a moment from the point of view of the theoretically ideal Soviet partisan type: a patriot, very likely a Party member, who had volunteered for partisan service early in the war and was

unreservedly dedicated to the Soviet cause. In his brigade there might be another 100 or so men similarly motivated. In the same brigade, however, there would be 100-200 former Red Army men, stragglers and ex-prisoners of war. Many of them had been the victims of circumstances and made excellent and dedicated partisans; others had surrendered without a fight or had deserted in the face of the enemy. All of them, had they made their way back to regular Soviet forces, would, at best, have been handled as material for the punishment battalions. Another 200 or 300 would be drafted men, not always too bad as fighters, but an unenthusias-tic crew who worried more about what was happening to their cows than about the outcome of the war.

Finally, in addition to the stragglers and drafted men, any one of whom might also have at some time or other collaborated with the enemy, there might be another 50 or 100 men tainted with treason—former policemen and mayors under the German occupation, deserters from the German indigenous administration, kolkhoz directors, factory managers, teachers, and others who had worked for the Germans before they realized that they were on the losing side. Neither the Soviet command—though it did adopt an anomalous attitude for the time being—nor the partisan with a demonstrably clear record was prepared to grant these doubtful or tainted groups a blanket absolution. The antecedents of each partisan were remembered, and class attitudes arose within the partisan movement which were clearly defined and, in some of their

manifestations, ugly.

The intensity of the class tensions is occasionally reflected in the surviving evidence. In the Grishin Regiment the "old partisans," i.e., those who had joined the unit during the period of its founding (January 1942), considered themselves an elite group and kept aloof from the later recruits.

[VI. A.K. Ic, "Feindnachrichtenblatt." 29 May 1942 (GMDS, VI AK 44653/14).]

In another instance 700 Tatars who deserted from a German unit were assigned in small groups to various brigades so that they could be kept under close watch. A deserter from another unit related that: "The commissars and politruks have their own moonshine vodka and often get drunk. It then sometimes happens that they ask individual men who have been drafted into the partisan movement why they did not join the partisan movement earlier. If they do not find a good answer immediately, they are shot."

[221. Sich. Div., Ic, "Ueberlaeufer aus dem Suedabschnitt," 10 May 1942, p. 2 (GMDS, 221 ID 223639/6, Anlage 37).]

The writer of one partisan diary noted that vodka and tobacco had been delivered by air "for the regular partisans."

[VI. A.K., "Tagebuch des politischen Leiters der Aufklaerer-Kompanie der Partisanen-Abteilung 'Morjak,'" May 1943 (GMDS, VI AK 44653/15).]

The Germans occasionally picked up reports of impending purges within the partisan units, which were expected to be aimed principally against the former police and military

collaborators.

[PzAOK 3, Ic, "Entwicklung der Bandenlage im Bereich der 3. Pz.AOK," 1 February 1944 (GMDS, PzAOK 3, 62587/12).]

The class attitudes are often most clearly delineated in statements written by the partisans themselves. Former military collaborators, for instance, were generally treated with outright contempt. A partisan commander writing after the war stated: "Repentant polizei began to come to us, too. We ourselves invited them through leaflets. If they didn't leave the police force, we wrote, we would shoot them down like dogs. When they came to the detachment, they were held under special observation for a long time. The men kept a watchful eye on them."

[Fyodorov, p. 425.]

A unit politruk noted in his diary that: "Eighteen hundred Cossack deserters have reported to the Dyatshkov brigade. One hundred and eighty Cossacks have gone over to the Grishin Regiment, taking along all their equipment. These deserters are not to be trusted. They were untrustworthy as fighters." He goes on to say, "If so much as a strong wind blows out of the East, these

miserable traitors get so excited that they do not know what to do."

[VI. A.K., Ic. "Tagebuch ... 'Morjak.' "]

The army stragglers, although they were a recognized mainstay of the movement, also remained under lingering suspicion. Fyodorov, an old-line Communist and volunteer partisan, has this to say about them:

But there were all kinds of men among the escaped prisoners of war. Some had voluntarily surrendered to the Germans. Later, when they had been eaten up by lice in the camps and had become sick and tired of being punched in the jaw, they repented and escaped to join the

partisans. Not all of them by any means told us the whole truth. And, of course, very few of them admitted they had surrendered of their own free will.

These men joined the partisans only because there was nothing else for them to do. They didn't want to go back to the Germans but, on the other hand, they didn't fight them any too

energetically either.

Some of the formerly encircled men who joined us had been "hubbies" [a reference to the stragglers who tried to lose themselves among the civilian population by settling in the villages and "marrying" local girls]. These were soldiers who for one reason or another had fallen behind the army. . . . Among the "hubbies" there were specimens who would have been glad to sit out the war behind a woman's skirt, but the Hitlerites would either drive them off to work in

Germany or else make them join the police. After turning this over in his mind such a guy would come to the conclusion that, after all, joining the partisans was more advantageous.

[Fyodorov, p. 424.]

The drafted peasants formed the most distinct class in the partisan movement. In the detachments they were often regarded as mere ballast. An ex-partisan, interviewed after the war, said:

In our detachment there were three brigades [battalions ?]. The first two were fighting brigades . . . excellent and very aggressive. These were composed of ex-war prisoners. The third brigade was no good at all. [It] was recruited from the local peasantry according to an order from Moscow which instructed us to get all the local peasants and [take] them into partisan

detachments before the Germans could recruit them, as they were doing for their labor force in Germany.

[H. S. Dinerstein, "Rand Partisan Interview No. 3," 19 May 1952.]

Captured partisans and deserters, when questioned about the composition or morale of their detachments, invariably spoke of the drafted men as a separate class with uniformly low morale.

It is significant that the majority of the partisans had second-class status in the movement and, more serious still, that many of them knew that the fact that they were partisans would very likely not gain them redemption in the eyes of the Soviet Union but would only postpone the day of reckoning. Despite the personal and group tensions thereby produced there was no serious threat of mutiny or even widespread defection. In the atmosphere of hopelessness which the German and Soviet authorities produced between them, day-to-day survival itself became an objective worth fighting for.

2. Rewards

Superficially, at least, partisan activity was not unrewarding. Almost everybody could remember the days when the partisans of the Civil War era occupied a privileged position in Soviet society.

Soviet propaganda tacitly promised similar recognition for World War II partisans. Newspapers, radio, and other media of information and propaganda were unstinting in their praise for the partisans. The partisans became the glamorous heroes of the war.

Soviet officials encouraged the partisans to take an inflated view of then-own importance; units were not relegated to the anonymity of numerical designations but were given distinctive names with patriotic associations, such as, "For the Homeland," "The People's Avengers," "Chapayev,"

"Stalin," "Suvorov," "Alexander Nevsky," and so on through the list of national heroes.

Decorations were awarded freely. Nearly every important brigade commander was a Hero of the Soviet Union. Commanders were instructed to nominate their good fighters for decorations, and medals were flown in to be awarded on the spot. Relatively minor achievements of the partisan units were given wide publicity.

These efforts caused the partisans themselves to think highly of then-own activities. Twenty or more diaries kept by partisans survive in the German records. That so many fell into German hands indicates that keeping a diary became something of a fad in the partisan movement. The diarists were usually motivated by a strong sense of the importance of then-activities. They believed their experiences were worth recording on the spot. The more modest believed they were compiling valuable records for their families; others expressed the intention to publish their reminiscences after the war.

The partisans were encouraged to extol their own achievements and sacrifices in letters to the unoccupied territory, as the following excerpts show:

1. Recently we have engaged in heavy fighting. Both we and the Germans have had losses, but the Germans had the heavier losses. Life is difficult, since everything around us has been burned down; but we do not lose our courage. Part of our people fight the Germans, and the others occupy themselves with farming and work in the forest. We have built a mill where we mill our grain. We have also built an oven in which we bake bread. Naturally, everything is done secretly and with caution. Our forest is surrounded by the Germans, but one needs to live in order to fight. The Stalin Order No. 130 will be fulfilled. Everything he demands of us will be accomplished. We dedicate our lives to the victory.

[Gr. GFP 639 b. Panzerarmeeoberkommando 2, "An dem Panzerarmeeoberkommando 2," 20 July 1942 (GMDS, PzAOK 2, 30233/66).]

2. Dear Comrades! [The letter is written to former fellow workers in a factory which was evacuated to Soviet territory.]

Last winter I called on you to enter into competition. We agreed that each was to improve his work in his own sphere of competition. Now, after three months I am ready to settle accounts.

What have we done in enemy territory? I won't bore you with details. I will say only that our commitment has been met. My commissar and I have received the Order of the Red Flag. Other partisans have received decorations as well. Now we must improve our methods of fighting the enemy. I call on you, my comrades, for better work. In the future may I hear only good of you.

[Ibid]

Such letters were undoubtedly propagandist; in intent and did not necessarily reflect the personal attitudes of the writers; still, they probably stimulated a conviction among the partisans

themselves that their achievements were heroic and would be recognized and remembered.

In the matter of material rewards the attitude of the Soviet authorities was ambiguous, though, on the surface at least, still generous. Technically, membership in a partisan unit was the equivalent of service in the Red Army, with equal rank, pay, and privileges. Brigade commanders were often given the rank of army colonel; otherwise, comparatively few commissions were granted

purely on the basis of service in the partisan movement. The whole question of pay was postponed until after the termination of hostilities. Leaves and rest periods behind the Soviet lines were the partisans' due in theory but were almost never granted.

On the whole, the rewards were intended only to stimulate expectations for the future. For most individuals the final result was a profound disappointment. During the period of the great Soviet advance in 1944, German agents reported that partisan units overtaken by the Red Army, instead of receiving the preferential treatment they expected, were granted short leaves and then thrown into front line units.

[Abwehrkommando 304, Meldekopf Renate, "Abwehrmaessige Ueberpruefung der V-Leute," 24 May 1944 (GMDS, HGr. Nord 75131/31). XX AK/Ic, "Jenseits der HKL," 28 May 1944

(GMDS, XX AK 54486/2).]

Given the intensely suspicious nature of the Soviet regime and the heterogeneous composition of the partisan units, it is likely that even the dedicated partisans, after their return to Soviet

territory, counted themselves lucky if they avoided being remanded to an army punishment battalion. Probably only the trusted Party men in command positions benefited materially from partisan service. Those fortunate partisans who managed to survive political screenings and enmity of the regular troops, which followed immediately upon their return to Soviet territory, probably at best managed to bask modestly in the glory of the continued favorable publicity given the partisan movement as a whole in Soviet newspapers, magazines, and published memoirs of the more prominent commanders.

3. Inertia

In contrast to a regular army, a partisan force is not expected to win a war but only to contribute to the victory. The question of what constitutes an adequate contribution is difficult to resolve even in a tightly controlled movement such as that in the Soviet Union. The average partisan does not engage in a single-minded pursuit of a heroic demise, but is rather more inclined toward preoccupation with his personal survival. Finding himself in a service which is by definition dangerous, he engages in a constant effort to reduce his risks. The same is true of the whole partisan movement. As an institution it becomes dedicated to its own preservation—not to its self-destruction. These attitudes are persistent and irresistible. At best, they limit the theoretical military potential of the partisan and, at worst, they reduce the movement to impotence.

The corrosive action of these forces was a major factor in the failure of the 1941 partisan organization. In many of the original partisan detachments the men simply decided that resistance was impossible, and the units dissolved. Those that survived did so by a series of rationalizations which resulted in the setting up of personal and group security as their primary objectives. In his memoirs, written after the war, an oblast Party secretary who had been intimately associated with the 1941 partisan movement describes one partisan unit as "a haven for a group of people who were defending only themselves against the enemy."

[Fyodorov, p. 196.]

"Another band," he writes, "was split into two factions: those who wanted to prepare forever and those who wanted action for the sake of adventure." The commanders, he says, had no definite objectives, but favored a middle course which leaned toward passivity.

[Ibid., p. 176.]

The situations he described were representative of a phenomenon which was almost universal.

Those units which survived the first shock of finding themselves in enemy territory and, looking around, discovered that they were probably not in imminent danger of annihilation, began to redefine their objectives in terms more comforting to themselves. In the process they convinced themselves that merely remaining in existence constituted a heroic achievement; and therefore they should lie low and prepare for a big attack on the enemy some time in the vague future, or husband their resources in preparation for the return of the Soviet forces.

In the spring of 1942 the Soviet command intervened to pump new life into the partisan movement by sending in regular officers and cadres and by bringing the partisan detachments under tight control. That process continued until the early summer of 1944. One of the most striking features of the 1942-44 period, however, was the tendency toward concentration of partisan forces. The units grew to strengths of 1,000 to 2,000 men or more. Moreover, they did not range freely throughout the occupied territory; instead, they drew together to form centers of partisan concentration. This process reached its fullest development in Belorussia, where a dozen or more centers appeared, one totaling 15,000 men, in and around Rossono Rayon, north of Polotsk; another totaling 12,000 men, along the Ushach River between Polotsk and Lepel;

another in the swamps along the Berezina River between Lepel and Borisov; more, of 8,000, 9,000, and 14,000 men, near Minsk, Senno, and Vitebsk. By 1943 at least three-fourths of the total strength of the partisan movement was concentrated in centers like these.

Such centers were created largely in response to tactical considerations and the dictates of terrain; but it seems worthwhile to consider that they might also have represented a stagnation of the partisan movement resulting from the pervasive individual and group desires for security.

Militarily, the large centers were not worth the expenditure of men, effort, and equipment required to create and maintain them. Ostensibly they denied the enemy access to vast stretches of territory; actually most of them grew in areas which had been by-passed by German troops and were never brought under military occupation. The centers served as fixed bases from which small detachments could be dispatched for attacks on the German lines of communication, but the process meant a very low efficiency in the utilization of personnel. Of 10,000 to 15,000 men only about 10 per cent could be used effectively at any one time. Superficially, the centers formed concentrations of strength; but they were islands (a comparison with the Japanese

situation in the Pacific may be apt). Lacking mobility, they did not constitute striking forces, nor could one center muster its forces to aid another under attack. Faced with a determined enemy assault, a center could avoid annihilation only by disbanding and permitting its forces to disperse piecemeal.

The greatest single advantage of the centers seems to have been the security they offered the partisans themselves. In swampy or wooded terrain, loosely held by the Germans, partisan units could develop undisturbed. Having reached a strength of 5,000 to 10,000 or more men they became immune to small enemy counteractions, and, since the Germans could rarely spare enough troops for large-scale antipartisan operations, centers could function relatively

undisturbed for months, or even years. While it was certainly not the nature of the Soviet regime to permit its partisans to idle away their time in relatively secure strongholds, something of the sort apparently could not be prevented. The centers produced good morale and discipline, although at the expense of miltiary efficiency and effectiveness. This situation is reflected in the following German report on the partisans of the Ushachi center:

Most of the brigades are reinforced with Red Army men and are led by officers of the Red Army.

Discipline and battle morale are good. At the same time, the majority of the partisans have not yet been engaged in combat with German units. As a result of the so far undisturbed

development of the Ushachi area the morale of both the population and the partisans is good.

[HSSPF Russland Mitte und Weissruthenien, Ic, "Feindlage im Raum Lepel-Ulla-Polozk-Doksohyze," 11 April 1944, p. 2 (GMDS, Waffen SS, Dirlewanger 78028/15).]

The function of the centers as a response to the forces tending towards inertia in the partisan

The function of the centers as a response to the forces tending towards inertia in the partisan