The exact total strength of the Soviet partisan movement will probably never be known. The best evidence indicates that it reached a total of 30,000 men by 1 January 1942, rose to 150,000 by the summer of 1942, to 200,000 by the summer of 1943, and then declined slightly to 150,000-175,000 by June 1944 as partisan territory was retaken by Soviet forces.
[The official Soviet war history, put out by the Institut Marksizma-Leninizma, Istoriya velikoi otechestvennoi voiny Sovetskogo Soyuza, éd. P. N. Pospelov et al. (Moscow: Voennoye Izadtelstvo Ministerstva Oborony SSSR), IV (1962), 468, states that there were 120,000 partisans in touch with the Central Staff in January 1943; 250,000 in January 1944. In view of the fact that many units were not in regular contact with Soviet headquarters at the earlier date, these figures correspond fairly closely to the estimates given in the present text.]
The personnel turnover resulting from casualties, sickness, and desertions over a three-year period, brought the total of men who at one time or another participated in the partisan
movement to about 400,000 or 500,000. These figures represent the number of partisans enrolled in regular, permanently organized combat units. In addition there was a host of agents, saboteurs, demolition teams, and others, who sometimes operated independently and at other times were in contact with the partisan detachments.
More significant for this study is the size of the combat detachments. These tended to be large;
the brigades ranged from 300 to 2,000 men or over, with the standard unit strength averaging between 800 and 1,400 men. The trend toward concentration of partisan forces in brigades and, further, in operative groups and centers was an extremely significant feature of the Soviet partisan movement. From the point of view of the Soviet command it had great prestige value; it also facilitated supply operations. The large units tended to become entities in themselves, impersonal and readily amenable to Soviet control. It had effects within the movement as well.
The size and apparent permanence of the brigades gave their members a valuable sense of security. The feeling of being isolated, impotent, and hopelessly outnumbered in small detachments which nobody knew or cared about had impaired the efficiency of all the 1941 detachments and had led many to collapse altogether. The brigades, on the other hand, were part of an established force, in close contact with the Soviet command, and carried out recognized and even heroic missions. The individual partisan counted for less in the mass organization; at the same time, he achieved a greater sense of personal importance since he could claim
membership in one of the well-known brigades and thereby reassure himself that his services would not go completely unnoticed. The large units also made possible the recruitment of doubtful elements. A 1,000-man brigade could carry 40 to 50 per cent drafted men. Within operative groups whole brigades, with the exception of their officer complements, could be organized, utilizing only drafted men or former collaborators.
B. RECRUITMENT
The partisan movement was not a volunteer organization. There was a constant trickle of
volunteers, but the majority of members in the non-officer group were drafted. According to one German source, most of the volunteers in 1942 were young men from towns and cities where they could not find employment.
[ Prop.Abt.W.beim Befh.d.rueckw.H.Geb.Mitte, "Stimmungsbericht fuer den Monat August 1942," 4 September 1942 (GMDS, OKW/733).]
In the countryside the draft was proclaimed publicly, generally in terms similar to the following:
Members of the [Soviet] Armed Forces, Citizens in the Area Temporarily Occupied by the Bandits!
All members of the armed forces who escaped from the pocket [Operation "Seidlitz,"
which cut off a Soviet army in June 1942] and are at home, also all men in the class of 1925 [those born in 1925], report to your regular units or join the partisan units! Those who remain in hiding and continue to sit at home in order to save their skins, and those who do not join in the patriotic war to help destroy the German robbers, also those who desert to the Fascist army and help the latter carry on a robber war against the Soviet people, are traitors to the homeland and will be liquidated by us sooner or later. Death to the German occupiers! We are fighting for a just cause! In 1942 the enemy will be totally destroyed.
2 August 1942
[XXIII A.K., Ic, "Uebersetzung, Tagebuch der Kampfhandlungen der Partisanenabteilung des Oblt. Morogoff," September 1942 (GMDS, XXIII AK 76156, Anlage 12).]
With the German hold on the occupied territory greatly weakened by the winter battles of 1941-42, the partisans were able to regularize their draft procedures. In a district south of Bryansk the detachments were ordered to draft all men between the ages of seventeen and fifty and also
childless women fit for military service. Three-man examining commissions, each including a medical officer and a representative of the special section of the NKVD ("OO"), were created.
The detachment commanders were required to draw up lists of men eligible for service, submitting the following information about each person: first and last names and patronymic, place of birth, date of birth, Party membership, nationality, education, occupation, military service status, active service in the Red Army, rank, membership in partisan or self-defense units and reasons for leaving, and names and residences of relatives.
[ Korueck 532, Ic, "Auszug aus dem Befehl fuer die Partisanen-Abteilungen im Rayon Wygonitschi," 19 October 1942 (GMDS, PzAOK 2, 30233/66)]
In May 1942 a Soviet Army battalion appeared near Bryansk and, according to its orders, carried out recruitment for the partisan movement in the following manner:
1. Drafted all Red Army men who had remained in the area as survivors of the encirclement battles or as discharged prisoners of war.
2. Mobilized the men born in the years from 1923 to 1925.
3. Organized partisan units. (The Red Army men were to be used, first, to bring the strength of the battalion up to 300 men and, after that, to reinforce the partisan units.)
[339. Inf.Div., Ic, "Interrogation of Sidor Kletschko," 5 July 1942, p. 1 (GMDS, DW 55 B).]
From time to time, local officials of the German administration reported on the recruiting procedures. A member of the Ordnungsdienst (the indigenous police) described conscription in his district, where all the men between the ages of sixteen and forty-five from five villages had been summoned to appear for examination and induction at a central collecting point. There, he said,
They were given physical examinations by a military mustering commission and were either taken along by the partisans or sent home if they were unfit for service. The partisans were led by Russian officers in black uniforms with regular insignia of rank.
Those found to be fit were told that they had been drafted into the Red Army and now had to render service as soldiers.
. . . All of them were immediately armed with rifles and assigned to companies and platoons.
[GFP Gr. 729, Aussenkdo. 5, "Bandenbewegung im Gebiet noerdlich des Iput," 3 October 1942, (GMDS, 221 36509/11, Anlage 1).]
On another occasion a village mayor reported that he and three other men from the village had been taken from their homes at night by armed partisans. They were marched to a collecting point where, in the course of the night, sixteen men were assembled. They were registered and assigned to squads of six men to be sent to various units. The mayor stated that in the course of the registration one of the partisans, probably a politruk, addressed the recruits as follows :
"You have now joined the partisans." To the reply that we had been brought by force, he answered, "That is not important. Those who do not want to go along can say so." No one answered, since all believed they could count on being shot if they protested. He [the
politruk] continued, "You are not to regard yourselves as drafted men, but as voluntary members of a partisan unit which has set itself the task of defending the fatherland."
[Chef Sipo u. SD, Teilkdo. Surash, "Partisanenmeldung fuer die Zeit v. 19-21.5.42," 21 May 1942, p. 1 (GMDS, 205 ID 24746/5).]
The method of processing men after they had been assigned to detachments is described in the German documents.
Each recruit goes through a probationary period and, as a rule, is not given a weapon until he has been with the unit at least four weeks. He is first detailed to tend the cattle and horses and perform other menial duties. Later, he may stand guard without a weapon, accompanied by an armed partisan. During the probationary period he is constantly under close surveillance. If a recruit manages to desert in spite of all this, all the members of his family are sought out and killed. When the unit changes camps all the recruits who have not yet demonstrated their reliability are shot. During the probationary period, the recruit's name is submitted to the Soviet authorities by radio for a background check. If the recruit comes through the trial period successfully, he is given a rifle and told that from that moment on he is a dead man if he falls into the hands of the Germans. The procedure is effective. It makes infiltration by our agents difficult, gives sufficient time for screening out undesirables, and places the remaining men in the position of believing themselves too deeply involved in partisan activity to risk reprisals from both sides by desertion.
[Kav.Regt. Mitte, "Erfahrungsbericht ueber die Kampftaktik der Partisanen und Moeglichkeiten unsererseits die Banditengefahr zu beschraenken," 23 June 1943 (GMDS, HGr Mitte 65002/22).]
This statement must, of course, be regarded more as a composite of practices which appeared frequently in many partisan units than as a description of standardized procedures.
Periodically, particularly in the spring and summer of 1942, the partisans were able to conscript more men than they could use. The surplus recruits, wherever possible, were sent across the front to Soviet territory. A German summary report, written in the summer of 1942, contains this account:
In addition to forced recruitment among the male population, which has been observed to bring up to strength or bolster the partisan units, regular draft notices are distributed in the villages according to which the male population are enjoined to assemble in the center of the village. The draft notices state that anybody who does not appear will be classified as a deserter and will be punished according to the laws of war. All men are taken through the front to the Red Army. . . . The population were warned for the last time that in case they did not appear at the proper time, their property would be confiscated and their houses burned down.
[Chef Sipo u. SD, Einsatzgr. B, "Taetigkeits- und Lagebericht der Einsatzgruppe B fuer die Zeit vom 16.8-31.8.1942," 1 September 1942, p. 4 (GMDS EAP 173-e-12-10/2).]
The commander of the First Belorussian Partisan Brigade, whose men held the Vitebsk Corridor, one of the major points of contact between the partisans and the Red Army, claimed that 25,000 recruits had been sent through the front from his operating area by August 1942.
[P. Vershigora, Lyudi s Chistoi Sovestyu (Moscow: Sovetskii Pisatel, 1951), p. 393.]
That this traffic, involving thousands of men, was carried on regularly during 1942 and 1943 is substantiated by German observations. Occasionally the men were armed, trained, and returned to the occupied territory as partisan replacements.
[Gen. Kdo. II.A.K., Ia, "Bandentaetigkeit im Maerz 1943," 29 March 1943 (NMT, NOKW 2369).]
C. TRAINING
Within the individual partisan detachments the levels of training varied widely. After the summer of 1942 a well-organized brigade might have had 1-5 officers and a similar number of noncommissioned officers on detached duty from the Red Army; 10-20 other officers, usually former Party or civilian officials; 20-30 specialists trained in Soviet territory, most of them demolitions men; 150-200 former Red Army men, either stragglers or escaped prisoners of war;
50-100 men who had some training in Soviet territory before being committed as partisan reinforcements; 100-200 men with no formal military training but with several months' experience as partisans; 200-400 raw recruits, chiefly peasants with neither training nor
experience; 1-10 women, some with no training; 1 or 2, perhaps, trained behind the Soviet lines as nurses or radio operators. Such a brigade would, in fact, have ranked above average. Not infrequently, brigades which suffered heavy losses carried as many as 75-80 per cent inexperienced recruits.
This large number of raw recruits was less of a handicap than it might seem at first glance. The Soviet authorities were willing to sacrifice quality for a mass movement, since the missions demanding skilled specialists could, in any event, be carried out by small trained detachments sent in for the purpose. While the wholesale drafting of untrained men may have decreased the over-all efficiency of the units, it served a purpose by sequestering manpower which was
potentially useful to the enemy and it strengthened the Soviet hold on the people of the occupied territory.
Training was one of the major functions of the partisan units. The brigades regularly scheduled military and political lectures, inspections, and weapons drills. There was ample time for such activities. One partisan stated that: "There were days, especially in the spring when the snow started to melt and the partisans, who were badly shod, could hardly move, when only the most important operations were carried out, i.e., procuring food or performing some sort of urgent job.
Usually for a few weeks in the spring we sat in the camp and took military training, just as in the army."
[Harvard University, Russian Research Center, Project on the Soviet Social System, interview protocol series B 7, # 3, p. 31.]
Most of the brigades were sedentary and operated from fixed bases, from which they sent out details to perform specific missions. The combat activity of a brigade was generally low in relation to its numerical strength. From the point of view of targets, opportunities, and equipment, the brigades were very often overmanned. In the larger partisan centers, where between 12,000 and 20,000 men were sometimes concentrated in a small area, it was possible for entire brigades to go for periods of several months without any noteworthy combat assignments.
Under such circumstances, recruits were given training in handling weapons, employed in building fortifications, or sent on foraging details.
The training programs of the brigades were hampered by two major difficulties: one was lack of esprit de corps; the other was the quality of instruction. Partisan warfare requires a certain
amount of individual initiative even in the lowest ranks. In combat, for instance, mass maneuvers are of no importance; the individual must be able and willing to make his own decisions.
Personal dedication to the cause is also necessary; one defector could, conceivably, bring about the destruction of an entire brigade. Generally speaking, while the brigades gave their drafted recruits a basic knowledge of tactics and some training in the handling of weapons, they failed to stimulate genuine esprit de corps. The peasant draftees remained, at best, indifferent. The most debilitating effects of the situation were kept in check by close surveillance of the men and by brutal reprisals against the families of deserters. Furthermore, the course of the war after 1941 made it clear to even the most reluctant recruits that their future did not lie with the Germans.
To achieve and maintain a reasonable standard of quality in the training of partisans remained a problem throughout the war. With a large contingent of inexperienced officers and a high percentage of low-caliber recruits there was constant danger of the partisan movement sinking into various kinds of erratic behavior, losing its military usefulness, and, possibly, becoming a political liability. The situation was dealt with in part by the development of rigorous external control and in part by the infusion into the partisan detachments of regular army officers and noncommissioned officers and of personnel trained on the Soviet side of the front. By late 1942 every brigade had some Soviet-trained partisan officers or regular army officers to supervise training and discipline.
Early in the war an extensive partisan training program was launched on the Soviet side of the front. It proved particularly valuable in the crucial 1941-42 period. By mid-1942 there were fifteen training centers located in the vicinity of Voronezh alone. Others were established at Voroshilovgrad and Rostov, and those at Moscow, Leningrad, and Stalingrad were among the largest. These schools trained partisans and diversionists who were to carry out special sabotage and espionage missions, provide the nuclei for new partisan units, or take over the leadership of existing detachments. For this type of training Communists and Komsomols were preferred, but Party affiliation, except in courses for leaders, was not mandatory.
In one of the centers near Voronezh the course of instruction lasted six weeks, and the classes numbered between 170 and 250 men. A school at Moscow turned out classes of 450 men. At the Sport Institute in Leningrad, training was given to Estonians who had been evacuated by the Red Army. Schools near Rostov turned out specialists in espionage, railroad demolitions, disruption of communications, and aircraft signal work. The NKVD operated additional centers of its own.
Thus, one NKVD school at Moscow trained officers. At Voronezh, classes of 400 to 500 men and women, selected for their special skills as telegraphers, railroad workers, pickpockets, and so on were trained in sabotage and espionage techniques.
[HFPCh im OKH/GenStdH/GenQu/GFP, "Entwicklung der Partisanenbewegung in der Zeit vom. 1.1.—30.6.1942," 31 July 1942 (GMDS, HGr Nord 65131/113).]
A typical training course covered the following:
1. Training in demolition of rail lines, bridges, airplanes, and airports and use of various kinds of explosives.
2. Instruction in how to act in the German rear area; how to seek out local Communists; how to secure German identification papers; how to recognize German rank insignia.
3. Instruction in map reading and use of the compass, and knowledge of terrain.
4. Instruction concerning methods of carrying out missions for the Soviet intelligence service.
[Ibid.]
At the conclusion of the training period the classes were divided into groups of eighteen to twenty persons, each under the command of an officer and a commissar. Dressed in civilian clothes, or occasionally in uniform, the units were parachuted behind the enemy lines. Some groups were assigned several women or children to act as scouts and agents. Standard armament consisted of one light machine gun, several submachine guns, four rifles, four hand grenades, and five kilograms of explosives.
[Ibid.]
In the spring of 1942 the Germans observed that partisans trained behind the Soviet lines were being sent into the occupied territory in large numbers. For example, it was known that, within a period of two to three weeks early in 1942, 450 parachutists were landed in a small area west of Mogilev in Belorussia.
[Ibid.]
Very often these people merged with locally organized detachments, where they assumed command, instituted strict discipline, and organized militarily useful operations.
Not all the partisans sent in from Soviet territory were highly trained, however; many training courses were superficial. Often units were hastily formed, armed, given some vague instructions concerning what was expected of them, and dropped by parachute, or else they infiltrated through the German lines.