Artículo científico

Even when there was no question of rebellion against the regime's orders—and except in very minor instances such rebellion did not occur—the partisan leadership exhibited many

characteristics which were dysfunctional from the standpoint of the regime. Most of these characteristics do not seem to have been peculiar to the partisan movement, but reflected certain general traits of the Soviet leadership strata. The peculiar conditions of partisan life tended to bring these traits to the surface. Furthermore, the great amount of information which is available concerning the partisan leaders enables us to scrutinize these traits more carefully than we can in most other segments of Soviet officialdom. The same is true, generally, of the positive

characteristics (again, viewed from the standpoint of the regime) of the officials who were engaged in directing the partisans.

The partisan experience provides ample evidence—if more is required— that Soviet officials are not selflessly devoted to serving their system. While the possibility of accumulating property is eliminated, the opportunity for personal gratification is not. It is evident, of course, that

"gratification" is a relative term, for nearly all partisans underwent severe deprivations and physical suffering. In a sense the extent of deprivations and risks made the opportunities for gratification more attractive. These opportunities were available in accordance with rank.

Officers received symbolic rewards such as medals, new uniforms, and Nagan pistols. At times they received better rations. Frequently they had more comfortable, private living quarters. One memoirist comments that the commander's living in a separate dugout could lead to abuses, but that sometimes the practice was justified.

[Brinskii, p. 382.]

Perhaps the grossest privilege of the officers—closely related to their separate living quarters—

was their enjoyment of sexual "rights" to the small number of women partisans. Although there is abundant evidence that this practice was common (see especially Chap. Ill, Sect. I, A, 7), it is so obviously contrary to the puritanical code publicly proclaimed in the USSR that Soviet memoirists rarely refer to the partisan officers' sexual behavior. One writer does describe an instance in which a supply officer brought a girl from a civilian refugee camp to live in his quarters. He even let her interfere with his duties: "Who was to be given weapons first, who second, was decided not by him but by his forest wife."

[Makedonskii, p. 179.]

Probably more significant than the evidence of personal selfishness is the indication of trends toward group autarchy. Much of the effectiveness of any fighting unit depends on the

development of group solidarity and esprit de corps. In regular military formations, negative aspects of this development are curbed by constant subordination to higher authority. Since the partisan units necessarily operated in a more isolated fashion, group solidarity frequently turned into looking out for unit interests at the expense of other partisan detachments. The success of the commander depended to a very large extent upon the prestige he enjoyed among his own men; consequently he tended to look after their interests to the exclusion of others. Some commanders insisted on their "sovereignty"; they tried to avoid subordination to any authority except the distant Central Staff.

[Linkov, p. 399.]

This tendency was closely related to the opposition which some detachment commanders showed in 1942 toward the formation of brigades. But apparently Saburov, who insisted on

forming one of the most important brigades, was just as adamant in refusing to take the next step of subordinating his enlarged unit to a higher group command within the Bryansk region.

Saburov succeeded in maintaining his group's "independence." This was due partly to the fact that the regime did not wish to form too large partisan units. However (if a captured partisan staff officer's account is reliable) Saburov's privileged position was due also to the fact that he had used his control of a radio transmitter to inflate his reputation so greatly that the Soviet headquarters feared the impact on morale if he were to be downgraded.

[Alexander Ruzanov, "Pravda o partizanskom dvizhenii," Frontovoi Listok, 28, 30 October 1943]

Months later other partisan brigade commanders found that Saburov's men were unscrupulous in grabbing air-dropped supplies which had been intended for other units. The despoiled partisans retaliated in kind.

[Aleksei F. Fyodorov, Podpolnyi obkom deistvuet (Moscow: Gosudarstvennoye Izdatelstvo Khudozhestvennoi Literatury, 1957), pp. 475, 506.]

Any student of Soviet industrial management will find striking parallels between these

"autarchical" traits and the practices of plant managers and regional economic directors.

Often "autarchy" went hand in hand with an effort to escape control in order to be able to avoid dangerous and difficult tasks. Sometimes, on the other hand, partisan commanders evidently desired independence because they feared that the dead hand of bureaucracy in higher headquarters would cripple their efforts to operate effectively. A major characteristic of the Soviet bureaucratic apparatus is a reluctance to reach decisions. This reluctance, which

ordinarily may lead only to inefficiency, can be fatal in partisan affairs. In a striking passage, one of the partisan leaders who was most insistent upon subordination of individual detachments to partisan field headquarters criticizes his Moscow headquarters:

I requested a decision from my superiors. But Moscow did not answer. Every day radiograms dealing with various matters came in, but they did not even contain a hint about the question we had raised. This is the way I understood it: our proposal still had not been placed before higher authorities, and the immediate directors did not want to take on themselves the full responsibility for such an important decision.

But we couldn't evade the responsibility of fighting. I reflected: if the assign-ment is fulfilled, nothing will come of it except the thanks we shall have earned; if, on the other hand, we die, there will also be somebody to remember us with kind words.

[Linkov, p. 269]

The approved personality for a partisan leader was one which empha-sized decisiveness, willingness to take risks, and contempt for routine. One major brigade commander relates how he, as a Party secretary before beginning his partisan duties, dealt with a "legalist" in the state banking system. The official refused to pay out money without the specific authorization from Moscow which the rules required, even though the Germans were at the gates of the city. After some argument, the Party secretary curtly told the bank official that his money was "mobilized"

for the war.

[Begma and Kyzya, p. 13.]

The recounting of this incident at the beginning of the memoir seems to strike a keynote for the book. It indicates that the demand for placing effectiveness above bureaucratic compliance with rules is not confined to paramilitary operations, but is the expected response of the efficient Soviet official to any of the numerous emergencies which have beset the Soviet system. General orders are to be treated no more inflexibly than standing regulations. Anyone who takes refuge in literal conformity to the rules is a "legalist," anyone who relies on inflexible obedience to orders or conformity to doctrine is a "dogmatist." Rejecting the plea that maintenance of small

detachments was necessary in 1942 to comply with obkom orders issued in 1941, a major

partisan commander said: "However, it is just there that the great strength of our Party lies, that it nowhere and never fell into dead dogma, never and nowhere lived by a routine worked out once and for all. Every time the Party made a decision corresponding to the circumstances. At present the circumstances have fundamentally changed."

[A. N. Saburov, Za linieyu frontu (partizanski zapysy): Kniga persha, Partizanskyi krai (Lvov:

Knyshkovo-Zhurnalne Vydavnytstvo, 1953), p. 181.]

The partisan officer was no more permitted to rely on obedience to a single superior than he was allowed to take refuge in standing orders or fixed regulations, As described in Chapter II

(especially Sect. Ill, I) the Soviet regime never relied upon a single chain of command to control the partisans. All our efforts to reduce the complex control system to a precise and all-embracing table of organization have been fruitless; and the more evidence one obtains, the more difficult it becomes to work out precise delineations of authority. It is possible that we still do not have enough information, or have analyzed what we have improperly. It appears far more likely, however, that the regime deliberately maintained areas of ambiguity in its command structure.

By maintaining multiple, overlapping chains of command it avoided giving the individual officer a secure spot in a hierarchy. As a result, he could not be sure who would inspect his work or give him orders. He could not, therefore, cultivate a comfortable relationship with a single superior who could be trusted to protect him in all circumstances. The tendency toward "family relations"

up and down the levels of authority was diminished, if not eliminated altogether. Left naked, in a sense, before the demands of unknown superiors, the partisan commander remained in a state of uneasiness which induced him to use his initiative to anticipate demands.

One is compelled to admire the ingenuity by which the Soviet regime, deliberately or not, established control mechanisms which tended to squeeze the maximum effort from its

lieutenants. It would appear that flexibility and ambiguity in the chain of command have been common attributes of Soviet control systems. Another general characteristic reflected in the partisans was the tendency of the regime to create a new organizational system whenever a major new problem arose. When the original scheme of partisan organization proved unviable, there was a long period (autumn 1941—spring 1942) of improvisation. Part of the territorial system of organization was salvaged; NKVD agencies continued in directing roles; Red Army front

commands were used as organizational centers; and in September 1941 a "staff of the partisan movement" was formed in Leningrad. In May 1942 the Leningrad "solution" became the model for the Central Staff, and, in following months, for a number of regional staffs. The new

organizations had the advantage of identifying the partisans with the Party rather than with the Red Army. As a result, in future years, the partisan movement could be hailed as a distinctive Party contribution to the great victory. At the same time, the staff arrangement brought together regular military personnel, Party officials, and the ubiquitous police officers in a body which constituted a formal recognition of the institutional interests in the partisan enterprise.

The formation of the staffs did not mean, however, that the system of partisan control became frozen. The increased responsibilities of the Ukrainian Staff after the Central Staff was abolished at the beginning of 1944 were clearly related to the need to extend partisan activity to politically

unassimilated territories in the West Ukraine and to the prospective East European satellites of the USSR. The Ukrainian Staff functioned (although Strokach was replaced as chief of staff by a partisan brigade commander, V. Andreyev) at least until June 1945, after the war in Europe ended.

[See the signature on the letter published in "Soviet-Czechoslovak Relations during the Great Patriotic War," International Affairs (Moscow), 1960, No. 8, pp. 119-121.]

There was nothing sacrosanct about the jurisdiction of the Ukrainian Staff, however. For example, in the summer of 1943 the Staff formed a special operating group at the Red Army Voronezh Front headquarters in order to coordinate partisan operations with the rapid advance of the regular forces.

[Istoriya velikoi otechestvennoi voiny, III, 307.]

Altogether, the ability of the Soviet regime to improvise new solutions to changing situations is strikingly demonstrated by the history of partisan control arrangements.

D. THE EXTENSION OF THE COMMUNIST SYSTEM