Stalin's Commandos: Ukrainian Partisan Forces on the Eastern Front 9780755621705, 9781784531683

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vi  •  Stalin’s Commandos 5  Problematic Questions in the History of Soviet Partisan Warfare 177 The Supply of Food and Clothing to the Partisans 177 The Complicity of the Red Partisans in Provoking Nazi Terror 185 6  Disciplinary Infractions in Partisan Detachments Banditry Drunkenness Debauchery

192 192 199 208

7  Internal Conflicts within Partisan Structures 216 Conflicts between Partisans of Different Agencies 216 Conflicts between the Commands of Detachments and the UShPD 225 Conflicts among Commanders of UShPD Detachments 237 Conflicts within UShPD Detachments 244 Conclusion: The Characteristics of Stalin’s Partisan War

253

Notes 265 Bibliography 300 Index 309

Maps 1 Administrative division of USSR territories occupied by Germany in 1941–44. 2 Forest areas of Ukraine and adjacent territories in 1941. 3 Disposition of principal Ukrainian SSR NKVD detachments transferred to the UShPD on 20 June 1942. 4 Disposition of principal UShPD partisan detachments and large units numbering 100 or more partisans, on 1 January 1943. 5 The area of operations of principal UShPD partisan detachments and large units numbering 100 or more partisans, on 7 July 1943. 6 Disposition of principal detachments of the UShPD and its representative agencies at fronts at the start of December 1943. 7 Disposition of principal detachments of the UShPD and its representative agencies on the fronts on 15 June 1944.

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xi xii xiii xiii xiv xiv xv

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Contents  •  vii

Diagrams 1 Number of partisan attacks against railroads over time. 2 Damaged and destroyed railroad cars (top); damaged and destroyed locomotives (bottom). 3 Length (in meters) of destroyed rail line (top); number of damaged rail ties (bottom). 4 The creation of Ukrainian partisan formations and their leadership, 1941–42. 5 Leadership organization chart for partisan formations, 1943–44.

xv xvi xvi xvii xviii

Tables 1 Data for the Work of the 2nd Department (Intelligence) of the UShPD 122 2 Personnel of the Eleven Largest Units of the UShPD 160 3 Villages of Ukraine Burned by the Occupants and Civilians Killed—1 187 4 Villages of Ukraine Burned by the Occupants and Civilians Killed—2 188

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Acknowledgements The author owes a debt of gratitude to the following individuals, without whom this book would not have been possible: Altskan Vadim, Arndt Bauerkemper, Karel C. Berkhoff, Bernhard Chiari, Stefan Creuzberger, Martin Dean, Ivan Dereiko, Zvi Gitelman, Volodymyr Hinda, Ivan Kapas, Hiroaki Kuromiya, Serhii Kokin, Jeffrey Kopstein, Oleksandr Lysenko, Bogdan Musiał, Dietmar Neutatz, Nikita Okhotin, Ivan Patryliak, Tatiana Pastushenko, Sergey Poltorak, Sebastian Stopper, Leonid Terushkin, Krisztián Ungváry, Oleksandr Vovk, Rafał Wnuk, and Arkadi Zeltser. The writing and publication of this book was made possible through the financial assistance of the Konrad Adenauer Foundation, the Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies (Amsterdam), the Gerda Henkel Foundation (Gerda Henkel Stiftung, Düsseldorf), the Harvard Ukrainian Research Institute (HURI), the Diane and Howard Wohl Fellowship at the Center for Advanced Holocaust Studies, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum (USHMM), and the International Institute for Holocaust Research Yad Vashem.

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Abbreviations

AK (Polish: Armia Krajowa), Home Army, the dominant Polish nationalistic resistance movement ASSR Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic AUCP(B) All-Union Communist Party (of the Bolsheviks) CC Central Committee CPB Communist Party of Belarus CP(B)U Communist Party (Bolshevik) of Ukraine FSB (Russian: Federal’naya sluzhba bezopasnosti Rossiyskoy Federatsii) Federal Security Service of the Russian Federation GKO (Russian: Gosudarstvennyj komitet oborony) State Defense Committee GRU (Russian: Glavnoe razvedyvatel’noe upravlenie) Main Intelligence Directorate GSh (Russian: General’nyj shtab) General Staff of the Red Army KA (Russian: Krasnaja Armija) Red Army KGB (Russian: Komitet gosudarstvennoy bezopasnosti) Committee for State Security Komsomol (Russian: Kommunisticheskij sojuz molodezhi) All-Union Leninist Young Communist League, the youth division of the AUCP(B) KONR (Russian: Komitet osvobozhdenija narodov Rossii) Committee for the Liberation of the Peoples of Russia, under the Leadership of Andrey Vlasov NKGB (Russian: Narodnyy komissariat gosudarstvennoy bezopasnosti) People’s Commissariat for State Security NKVD (Russian: Narodnyy komissariat vnutrennikh del) People’s Commissariat of Internal Affairs NKO (Russian: Narodnyy komissariat oborony) People’s Commissariat of Defense

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x  •  Stalin’s Commandos



NSZ (Polish: Narodowe Siły Zbrojne) National Armed Forces, the radical right-wing Polish resistance movement—the Polish analog of the UPA OGPU (Russian: Objedinennoe gosudarstvennoe politicheskoe upravlenie) Joint State Political Directorate OMSBON (Russian: Otdel’naja motostrelkovaja brigade osobogo naznachenija) Independent Special Purpose Motorized Rifle Brigade OUN Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists OUN(B) Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (Banderites) OUN(M) Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (Melnykites) ROA (Rusian: Russkaja osvoboditel’naja armija) Russian Liberation Army RKKA (Russian: Raboche-krest’yanskaya Krasnaya armiya) Workers’ and Peasants’ Red Army RKU Reichskommissariat Ukraine RSFSR Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic RU (Russian: Razvedyvatel’noie upravlienie) Intelligence Directorate SB OUN (Ukrainian: Sluzhba bezpeki) Security service of the OUN SD (German: Sicherheitsdienst) Security service secret police of the Third Reich SMERSH (Russian: Spetsyalnye metody razoblacheniya shpyonov) “Special methods of spy detection,” but also anecdotically referred to as “Smert’ Shpionam”: “Death to spies.” Military counterintelligency of the Red Army, 1943–46 SS (German: Schutzstaffel) Nazi Party defense corps SSR Soviet Socialist Republic TsShPD (TSentral’nyj shtab partizanskogo dvizhenija) Central Staff of the Partisan Movement UNR Ukrainian People Republic, 1918–20 UNS Ukrainian People’s Self-Defense in Galicia in the second half of 1943, organized by the OUN UPA (Ukrainian: Ukrayins’ka povstans’ka armiya) Ukrainian Insurgent Army, a nationalist paramilitary and later partisan army, the Ukrainian analog of the Polish NSZ UShPD (Russian: Ukrainskiy shtab partizanskogo dvizhenija) Ukrainian Staff of the Partisan Movement USSR Union of Soviet Socialist Republics WMD Weapon of Mass Destruction

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Label as Map 1 0

150

300

km

German administrative zones in occupied territories

Finland

German military administration

Leningrad Baltic Sea

Ukraine post-war

Estonia OS

USSR

TL

Moscow

D

Lithuania

AN

Latvia

N

Eastern Prussia

Belarus nexed ies anrd Reich r o t i r Ter e Thi by th Warsaw

te ra no l er era ov n G Ge

Cracow Slovakia

HU

A NG

RY

Kyiv Lviv REICHSKOMMISSARIAT Tra UKRAINE nsn ist ria

Kharkiv

Odesa ROMANIA Black Sea

Map 1. Administrative division of USSR territories occupied by Germany in 1941–44.

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Plock

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Grosswardein (Oradea)

Galati

Iasi

Bryansk

Osipenko (Berdyansk)

Belgorod

Starobilsk

Kupiansk

Yelets

Borisoglebsk

Buturlinovka

Voronezh

Tambov

Michurinsk

Sevastopol

Akkerman (Bilhorod-Dnistrovskyi) Yevpatoria

Kherson

Mykolaiv

Kerch Novorossiysk

Feodosia

Krasnodar

Armavir

Tikhoretsk

Voroshilovgrad Sloviansk (Luhansk) Dniprodzerzhynsk Kirovohrad Dnipropetovsk Artemivsk Ordzhonkidze Stalino Makiwka Shakhty Kryvyi Rih (Donetsk) Zaporizhia Novoshakhtinsk Mariupol Rostov Kremenchuk

Poltava

Kharkiv

Okhtyrka

Konotop

Klintsy

Nizhyn

Cherkasy

Odesa

Pervomaisk

Constanta

Izmail

Chisinau

Bala

Driestr

Kamianets-Podilsky

Kyiv

Chernihiv

Bila Tserkva Vinnylzia

Berdychiv

Zhytomyr

Mazyr

Mogilev

Map 2. Forest areas of Ukraine and adjacent territories in 1941. Source: Historischer Atlas der Ukraine. Ein deutsches Dokument aus dem Jahr 1941. - Wiesbaden, 1993. Die Karte № 32.

40–100

25–40

10–25

0–10

Chernivtsi

Proskurov

Rivne

Ternopil

Lutsk

Lviv

Drohobych

Kholm

Brest Litovsk

Percentage of Forest Area

Crakow

Vistula

Warsaw

Navahrudak

Map 2

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L

O

P

The USSR border in 1939

E

VOLYN Lutsk

A

I

S

Chernihiv

Front line in June 1942

Sumy

Rivne Zhytomyr Kyiv

Lviv Ternopil

Kharkiv

Proskurov Poltava Cherkasy GALITSIA Vinnytsia Stanislav Uzhhorod (modern-day Ivano-Frankivsk) Dnipropetrovsk Kirovohrad Chernivsti B UKOVINA Zaporizhia

Voroshylovhrad (modern-day Luhansk) Stalino (modern-day Donetsk)

Mykolaiv Kherson

Odesa

Simferopol

Map 3. Disposition of principal Ukrainian SSR NKVD detachments transferred Map 3 to the UShPD on 20 June 1942. Only detachments in constant radio communications and numbering 50 or more partisans are shown. Here and below, groups of the USSR NKVD and GRU are not shown. Source: UShPD Operations Map (TsDAHO. F. 62. Op. 6. Spr. 1. Ark. 1). The USSR border in 1939

L

O

P

VOLYN Lutsk Lviv Ternopil

E

A

I

S

Chernihiv Sumy

Rivne Zhytomyr Kyiv

Kharkiv

Proskurov Poltava Cherkasy GALITSIA Vinnytsia Stanislav Uzhhorod (modern-day Ivano-Frankivsk) Dnipropetrovsk Kirovohrad Chernivsti B UKOVINA Zaporizhia

Voroshylovhrad (modern-day Luhansk) Stalino (modern-day Donetsk)

Mykolaiv Odesa

Kherson

Simferopol

Map 4. Disposition of principal UShPD partisan detachments and large units numbering 100 or more partisans, on 1 January 1943. For technical reasons, O. Fedorov’s large Chernihiv unit is not shown, as at the turn of 1942–43 it was located within the RSFSR. Source: UShPD Operations Map (TsDAHO. F. 62. Op. 6. Spr. 10. Ark. 1).

Map 4

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L

O

P

Lutsk

The USSR border in 1939

E

A

I

S

Chernihiv Sumy

Rivne Zhytomyr Kyiv

Lviv Ternopil

Kharkiv

Proskurov Poltava Cherkasy Vinnytsia Stanislav Uzhhorod (modern-day Ivano-Frankivsk) Dnipropetrovsk Kirovohrad Chernivsti Zaporizhia

Voroshylovhrad (modern-day Luhansk) Stalino (modern-day Donetsk)

Mykolaiv Odesa

Kherson

Simferopol

Map 5. 5 The area of operations of principal UShPD partisan detachments Map and large units numbering 100 or more partisans, on 7 July 1943. Source: UShPD Operations Map (TsDAHO. F. 62. Op. 6. Spr. 30. Ark. 1).

Front line in December1943

The USSR border in 1939

O

P

L

E

A

I

S

Chernihiv Sumy

Lutsk Rivne Lviv Ternopil

Zhytomyr

Kyiv

Kharkiv

Proskurov

Cherkasy Vinnytsia Stanislav (modern-day Ivano-Frankivsk) Kirovohrad Chernivsti

Poltava

Uzhhorod

Dnipropetrovsk Zaporizhia

Voroshylovhrad (modern-day Luhansk) Stalino (modern-day Donetsk)

Mykolaiv Odesa

Kherson

Simferopol

Map 6. Disposition of principal detachments of the UShPD and its

Map 6 agencies at fronts at the start of December 1943. Positions are representative

shown for detachments and large units numbering 100 or more partisans. Source: UShPD Operations Map (TsDAHO. F. 62. Op. 6. Spr. 42. Ark. 1).

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ad Luhansk)

Front line in June 1944

L

O

P

The USSR border in 1939

E

Chernihiv

Lutsk Rivne

Uzhhorod

Sumy Zhytomyr

Lviv Ternopil

A

I

S

Kyiv

Proskurov

Kharkiv Cherkasy

Stanislav Vinnytsia (modern-day Ivano-Frankivsk)

Kirovohrad

Chernivsti

Poltava Voroshylovhrad (modern-day Luhansk)

Dnipropetrovsk Zaporizhia

Stalino (modern-day Donetsk)

Mykolaiv Odesa

Kherson

Simferopol

Map 7. Disposition of principal detachments of the UShPD and its Map 7 agencies on the fronts on 15 June 1944. Positions are shown representative for detachments and large units numbering 100 or more partisans. For technical reasons, the 1st Ukrainian Partisan Kovpak Division commanded by P. Vershyhora and the detachment commanded by I. Podkrytov are not shown, because in June 1944, they were located in the Belarusian SSR. Source: UShPD Operations Map (TsDAHO. F. 62. Op. 6. Spr. 57. Ark. 1).

ad Luhansk)

)

Month: Year:

2000 1900 1800 1700 1600 1500 1400 1300 1200 1100 1000 900 800 700 600 500 400 300 200 100 0

J F MAM J J A S OND J F MAM J J A S OND 1942 1943

Diagram 1. Number of partisan attacks against railroads over time. Here and below, the data shown is for all USSR territories (including Ukraine) occupied by the Germans.

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Month: Year:

Month: Year:

2400 2200 2000 1800 1600 1400 1200 1000 800 600 400 200 0

700 600 500 400 300 200 100 0

Destroyed and damaged carriages

J F MAM J J A S OND J F MAM J J A S OND 1942 1943 Damaged locomotives

J F MAM J J A S OND J F MAM J J A S OND 1942 1943

Diagram 2. Damaged and destroyed railroad cars (top); damaged and destroyed locomotives (bottom).

Metres

Destroyed tracks 300,000 250,000 200,000 150,000 100,000 50,000 0 Month: J F MAM J J A S OND J F MAM J J A S OND 1942 1943 Year:

Destroyed sleepers 35,000 30,000 25,000 20,000 15,000 10,000 5,000 0 Month: J F MAM J J A S OND J F MAM J J A S OND 1942 1943 Year:

Diagram 3. Length (in meters) of destroyed rail line (top); number of damaged sleepers (bottom).

Diagram 2

Sources for Diagrams 1–3: Pottgieser, Hans Die Deutsche Reichsbahn im Ostfeldzug, 1939—1944. — Stuttgart, 1960.

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Diagram 4. The creation of Ukrainian partisan formations and their leadership, 1941–42.* AUCP(B) CC (Stalin)

USSR State Defence Committee (GKO) (Stalin)

(Stalin) Supreme Commander in Chief (Stalin)

USSR NKVD (L. Beria) P. Sudoplatov

UCP(B) CC (N. Khrushchev) D. Korotchenko

Southwestern and Southern Fronts of Red Army, their military councils, and front headquarters of political directorates and intelligence directorates

Army staff military councils, political directorates, and intelligence directorates

Ukrainian SSR NKVD (S. Savchenko)

T. Strokach

Ukrainian SSR NKVD oblast directorates

UCP(B) CC oblast committees

Diversionary, terrorist, and intelligence detachments and groups, including those created directly by city and raion committees of the CP(B)U and by raion and city divisions of the Ukrainian SSR NKVD

Arrows show the primary direction of subordination chain of command; lines show directions of information exchange and of concurrence in the plans of decision-making structures. *The diagram does not include USSR NKVD formations (directly subordinate to Sudoplatov) or central army intelligence bodies, i.e., Red Army General Staff Intelligence Directorate (RU, later GRU). The groups and detachments shown in this diagram were transferred to the UShPD in summer 1942.

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Diagram 5. Leadership organization chart for partisan formations, 1943–44.* Source: Ukraïna partyzans’ka, 233. AUCP(B) CC (Stalin) USSR State Defence Committee (GKO) (Stalin)

Supreme Commander in Chief (Stalin) 1st, 2nd, 3rd, & 4th Ukrainian Fronts, Red Army Military councils 1st, 2nd, 3rd, & 4th TsShPD Ukrainian Fronts (P. Ponomarenko), disbanded on 17 January 1944

UCP(B) CC (N. Khrushchev) UShPD (T. Strokach)

UShPD representatives at military councils of the 1st, 2nd, 3rd, & 4th Ukrainian Fronts

Operational groups of Army military councils

Partisan units and detachments, and intelligence and diversionary groups

Oblast-staffs of the partisan movements

Underground oblast CP(B)U committees**

Partisan units and detachments, and intelligence and diversionary groups

Arrows show the direction of subordination; lines, the directions of information exchange and concurrence in plans of decision-making structures. * The diagram does not show the chain of command of USSR NKGB, Ukrainian SSR NKGB, or Red Army Staff Intelligence Directorate partisan formations. ** As a rule, the head of an oblast staff of the partisan movement performed two jobs: first secretary of the underground oblast committee of the CP(B)U, and commander of a large UshPD unit.

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ad Luhansk)

Front line in June 1944

L

O

P

The USSR border in 1939

E

Chernihiv

Lutsk Rivne

Uzhhorod

Sumy Zhytomyr

Lviv Ternopil

A

I

S

Kyiv

Proskurov

Kharkiv Cherkasy

Stanislav Vinnytsia (modern-day Ivano-Frankivsk)

Kirovohrad

Chernivsti

Poltava Voroshylovhrad (modern-day Luhansk)

Dnipropetrovsk Zaporizhia

Stalino (modern-day Donetsk)

Mykolaiv Odesa

Kherson

Simferopol

Map 7. Disposition of principal detachments of the UShPD and its Map 7 agencies on the fronts on 15 June 1944. Positions are shown representative for detachments and large units numbering 100 or more partisans. For technical reasons, the 1st Ukrainian Partisan Kovpak Division commanded by P. Vershyhora and the detachment commanded by I. Podkrytov are not shown, because in June 1944, they were located in the Belarusian SSR. Source: UShPD Operations Map (TsDAHO. F. 62. Op. 6. Spr. 57. Ark. 1).

ad Luhansk)

)

Month: Year:

2000 1900 1800 1700 1600 1500 1400 1300 1200 1100 1000 900 800 700 600 500 400 300 200 100 0

J F MAM J J A S OND J F MAM J J A S OND 1942 1943

Diagram 1. Number of partisan attacks against railroads over time. Here and below, the data shown is for all USSR territories (including Ukraine) occupied by the Germans.

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Month: Year:

Month: Year:

2400 2200 2000 1800 1600 1400 1200 1000 800 600 400 200 0

700 600 500 400 300 200 100 0

Destroyed and damaged carriages

J F MAM J J A S OND J F MAM J J A S OND 1942 1943 Damaged locomotives

J F MAM J J A S OND J F MAM J J A S OND 1942 1943

Diagram 2. Damaged and destroyed railroad cars (top); damaged and destroyed locomotives (bottom).

Metres

Destroyed tracks 300,000 250,000 200,000 150,000 100,000 50,000 0 Month: J F MAM J J A S OND J F MAM J J A S OND 1942 1943 Year:

Destroyed sleepers 35,000 30,000 25,000 20,000 15,000 10,000 5,000 0 Month: J F MAM J J A S OND J F MAM J J A S OND 1942 1943 Year:

Diagram 3. Length (in meters) of destroyed rail line (top); number of damaged sleepers (bottom).

Diagram 2

Sources for Diagrams 1–3: Pottgieser, Hans Die Deutsche Reichsbahn im Ostfeldzug, 1939—1944. — Stuttgart, 1960.

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Diagram 4. The creation of Ukrainian partisan formations and their leadership, 1941–42.* AUCP(B) CC (Stalin)

USSR State Defence Committee (GKO) (Stalin)

(Stalin) Supreme Commander in Chief (Stalin)

USSR NKVD (L. Beria) P. Sudoplatov

UCP(B) CC (N. Khrushchev) D. Korotchenko

Southwestern and Southern Fronts of Red Army, their military councils, and front headquarters of political directorates and intelligence directorates

Army staff military councils, political directorates, and intelligence directorates

Ukrainian SSR NKVD (S. Savchenko)

T. Strokach

Ukrainian SSR NKVD oblast directorates

UCP(B) CC oblast committees

Diversionary, terrorist, and intelligence detachments and groups, including those created directly by city and raion committees of the CP(B)U and by raion and city divisions of the Ukrainian SSR NKVD

Arrows show the primary direction of subordination chain of command; lines show directions of information exchange and of concurrence in the plans of decision-making structures. *The diagram does not include USSR NKVD formations (directly subordinate to Sudoplatov) or central army intelligence bodies, i.e., Red Army General Staff Intelligence Directorate (RU, later GRU). The groups and detachments shown in this diagram were transferred to the UShPD in summer 1942.

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Diagram 5. Leadership organization chart for partisan formations, 1943–44.* Source: Ukraïna partyzans’ka, 233. AUCP(B) CC (Stalin) USSR State Defence Committee (GKO) (Stalin)

Supreme Commander in Chief (Stalin) 1st, 2nd, 3rd, & 4th Ukrainian Fronts, Red Army Military councils 1st, 2nd, 3rd, & 4th TsShPD Ukrainian Fronts (P. Ponomarenko), disbanded on 17 January 1944

UCP(B) CC (N. Khrushchev) UShPD (T. Strokach)

UShPD representatives at military councils of the 1st, 2nd, 3rd, & 4th Ukrainian Fronts

Operational groups of Army military councils

Partisan units and detachments, and intelligence and diversionary groups

Oblast-staffs of the partisan movements

Underground oblast CP(B)U committees**

Partisan units and detachments, and intelligence and diversionary groups

Arrows show the direction of subordination; lines, the directions of information exchange and concurrence in plans of decision-making structures. * The diagram does not show the chain of command of USSR NKGB, Ukrainian SSR NKGB, or Red Army Staff Intelligence Directorate partisan formations. ** As a rule, the head of an oblast staff of the partisan movement performed two jobs: first secretary of the underground oblast committee of the CP(B)U, and commander of a large UshPD unit.

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Introduction Eastern and some South-Eastern regions of Europe are under public threat, marked by looting and gang attacks … As is known, in the rear of German troops Bolshevism systematically nurtured and sent on missions robbers, bandits and soldiers of the Red Army under the name of “partisan.” From No. 198. Order of Reichsführer SS Heinrich Himmler, 21 June 19431

“Everything You Wanted to Know About Soviet Partisans But Were Afraid to Ask.” When historians explain what this book is about, they often paraphrase the title of a well-known film. The work tells of the operations and everyday life of Ukrainian forest soldiers. Close attention is devoted to those aspects that my predecessors have, in studying this part of the Stalinist system, only mentioned briefly in their monographs while thoroughly examining other, no less important issues. This book has been praised for its language even by those who read it in translation.2 A number of authentic quotes from the first half of the 1940s have been included in the text to enable the reader to feel the “spirit of the age.” Their vocabulary and turns of phrase are part of the key to understanding the worldview of the participants in these events. The only exception to this readability is the first chapter, which is not quite as easy to digest owing to its content. It does not describe events or actions but departments and agencies, i.e. those structures and people who formed the detachments and groups, issued orders to the forest soldiers, and tracked how those orders were carried out. Perhaps some readers would prefer to read the first chapter last. The second chapter provides a chronological panorama of the partisan war. Attitudes from one side, from Kyiv and Moscow, are juxtaposed with attitudes from the other, from Berlin and Rivne (the city the occupiers made the capital of Reichskommissariat Ukraine, or Nazi Ukraine). Material from the radical Ukrainian nationalists, against whom the communists fought, and the Polish moderate nationalists, with whom the Soviets entered into a

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2  •  Stalin’s Commandos tactical alliance, has also been used. The Germans fought against all three partisan armies. Chapter 3 is devoted to the orders carried out by the partisan section of Stalin’s special forces. Burning of mills, destruction of collective farms and small factories, and disruption of trains were accompanied by shameless and often deceitful propaganda. Less than a tenth of the book is devoted to partisan atrocities. The tricks and gimmicks used to pull individuals into agent networks are also described. As the issue of terrorism has become of immediate relevance in the modern world, attention has been devoted to the activities led by Pavel Sudoplatov, the acknowledged master of contract-style murder. The Pobediteli (“Victors”) Detachment, near Rivne, was well-known as the most com­bative in this sense within the entire territory of the Soviet Union captured by the Germans.3 The detachment was commanded by Dmitrii Medvedev, who had held a supervisory position in a Gulag camp before the war. Chapter 4 examines who the forest soldiers were and how they were mobilized. In Chapter 5, the partisans are viewed through the prism of how they were perceived by the population of Eastern Europe. The Soviet political superstructure persisted in mismanaging the Ukrainian commandos, which adversely affected their relations with civilians. But the cold logic of the Soviet leadership further deepened the lack of trust between the unrelenting racist occupiers and the civilians they had conquered. Chapters 6 and 7 are devoted to the brazen antics and squabbles organized by commanders, as well as the rank and file. The conclusion sets forth the results of this work. *** Despite the fact that, owing to the spread of low-intensity conflicts throughout the world, the experience of the Soviet partisan war is becoming an increasingly urgent and important topic, there are only a few commendable general works on this subject. Prior to 1991 scholars were compelled to work in difficult conditions,4 yet even democratization failed to spark a research boom in this field of study. A number of authors published books without links to any sources,5 while the scholarly nature of other studies in Eastern Europe was limited.6 Those histories of the Soviet partisan struggle which rely most heavily on documentary sources have appeared in Ukraine. These include Anatolii Kentii and Volodymyr Lozytsky’s book War without Mercy and Clemency,7 published in 2005. However, in their introduction the authors frankly declare that “the most acute and burning questions” regarding the history of the partisan struggle are not explored in the monograph.8

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Introduction  •  3 Kenneth Slepyan’s absorbing monograph Stalin’s Guerrillas, published in the US in 2006,9 is based on documents from Eastern European archives and examines the social history of partisan detachments. Less attention is devoted to Ukraine, since only a small proportion of communist formations fought on the territory of the Ukrainian SSR. Equally interesting is the work of the Smolensk-based historian Igor Shcherov, which also appeared in 2006.10 The present book is focused on the Soviet partisan war on Ukrainian territory in 1941. The main goal of this study is to present a multidimensional picture of this conflict, paying special attention to its lesser-known aspects. It is important to explain the specific features of Soviet Ukrainian partisan activity, and to answer the following question: In what way was their “Sovietness” manifested? There is a widely disseminated theory that practically all extreme social phenomena during the course of a war are caused by the very fact of mass bloodshed. On a philistine level this is expressed by such statements as: “There was a war going on!”11 This is a thoroughly primitive view. In various periods, in various cultures, the conduct of war has been fundamentally different. For example, the internecine wars of the rajas in medieval India and the struggle of the shoguns and other feudal lords in Japan in the fourteenth to sixteenth centuries were characterized by highly established methods for waging combat and a respect for the opponent. Such a characterization cannot be applied to, say, the wars waged by related princes of the Riurik dynasty in medieval Kyivan Rus′ or the religious carnage in France in more modern times. Methods of waging wars differed in various social systems and among various political forces, and it is crucial to reveal these special features. According to another popular viewpoint, all the brutalities of World War II in Europe stemmed from the goals of the Third Reich and the Nazis’ fighting methods. The debatable nature of such a premise with regard to the Soviet–German war is indicated at the very least by the fact that in the USSR mass terror was carried out on a significant scale even before the Nazi regime emerged. Therefore, this study also aims to raise the following question: To what extent did both systems—Nazi and Soviet—have an impact on the war’s brutalities? The leading Russian researcher of Nazism, Oleg Plenkov, has expressed a view that has become commonplace: “Within the framework of the Stalinist totalitarian system it was simply impossible to wage war in any other way, but on the other hand, this was [also] the tragedy of the situation – the Wehrmacht could not have been defeated in any other way.”12 It is also important to debate the effectiveness of communist methods of waging war, using the example of red partisan activity.

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4  •  Stalin’s Commandos During the process of selecting materials for this book, special attention was paid to the activities of the partisans Sydir Kovpak and Oleksii Fedorov, the respective leaders of the large Sumy and Chernihiv (eventually Chernihiv-Volyn) units (soedinenia). These two partisan leaders—ethnic Ukrainians—were twice awarded the highest possible government awards: the Gold Star of the Hero of the Soviet Union. Apart from them, no other partisans across the entire occupied territory of the USSR ever received such a high official appraisal of their activities. The detachment (later, a large unit) commanded by Aleksandr Saburov also deserves special mention. No other large unit within the Ukrainian Staff of the Partisan Movement (UShPD) served as a base for the creation of such a significant number of independent partisan detachments and units. It is no surprise that his colleague Mikhail Naumov aptly dubbed Saburov “the incubator of the partisan movement.”13 Ukraine is superbly apposite for clarifying the above-mentioned questions, for during the years of the Soviet–German war two large antiSoviet guerrilla movements existed there: the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA) and the Polish armed resistance known as the Home Army—Armia Krajowa (AK). Therefore, possibilities for correlation and comparison using the example of Ukraine are better than, say, the example of Belarus. The present book is based on collections of published material14 and memoirs,15 as well as documents held in the archives of Germany,16 Ukraine,17 Poland,18 the United States,19 Israel,20 and Russia.21 Unfortunately, far from all relevant Eastern European archival repositories and collections are accessible. The most complicated situation for historians has emerged in the Russian Federation. Criticism of sources in those cases where it is necessary has been applied during the course of the book’s narration.22 It must be stated that all the sides taking part in the conflict in Ukraine in 1941–44 without exception followed the practice of doctoring operational reports, inflating their successes in their respective leaders’ eyes. It should also be noted that some internal documents generated by the Ukrainian nationalists about the Soviet partisans contain unjustifiably harsh assessments of the latter. For example, in 1943 the central leadership of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN) circulated a directive about the collection of compromising materials on the reds. Moreover, the reports that were gathered by the Soviet partisans, including commanders, about each other are often subjective: a number of documents were formulated during moments of conflict. Thus, only the presentation and comparison of a variety of diverse sources can help create a true picture of the activities of the Soviet partisans. ***

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Introduction  •  5 Before delving into the partisans’ activities, it is important to describe the theater of military operations. Between the two world wars, the territory inhabited by the Ukrainians was divided among four states: the Soviet Union, Poland, Romania, and Czechoslovakia. The eastern and central parts of Ukraine belonged to the USSR and comprised the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic (Ukrainian SSR). Western Ukraine—the historical regions of Volyn and Eastern Galicia (Ukrainian Galicia)—belonged to Poland. Northern Bukovina and Southern Bessarabia were part of the Romanian monarchy, while the region known as Transcarpathia was ruled by Czechoslovakia. On the eve of and during World War II territorial changes took place throughout Eastern Europe. In late 1938–early 1939 Transcarpathian Ukraine came under Hungarian rule, remaining under Hungary’s control until late 1944. In 1939, at the outset of the Soviet–Polish war, Western Ukraine became part of the Ukrainian SSR. In late June–early July 1940 Romania ceded the territories of Bessarabia and Northern Bukovina to the Soviet Union. A large chunk of Bessarabia composed the main part of the Moldavian SSR. Northern Bukovina and Southern Bessarabia became part of the Ukrainian SSR. A highly complex process of Sovietization was launched in the newly annexed lands. Two of its components made the greatest impression on the local residents: the creation of a new system of government and the mass repressions that were introduced by this government. The non-aligned Ukrainian nationalist Taras Borovets recalled the arrival of Soviet apparatchiks with a mixture of loathing and disgust: The raion [district] party committee of the new aristocracy with its gaggle of first, second, [and] third secretaries—there is no end to them. The raion executive committee, the raion Registry of Births and Deaths, raion food industry cooperatives, raion people’s courts, raion grain procurement, raion cattle procurement, raion poultry procurement, raion coal, raion trade, raion forestry industry, raion hide procurement, raion milk—the Soviet “rai[on]s” [raev: a pun on the first three letters of raion (district) and rai, meaning paradise] are innumerable. And in each of those “paradises” were more bureaucratic spongers than in the former tsarist gubernial administration in Zhytomyr. On the contrary, in the former “paradise”—the volost—was a single foreman with a secretary and a guard. Who will feed this whole “paradisiacal” locust swarm of bureaucratic parasites? They are sponging off the people, like lice on a typhus victim.23

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6  •  Stalin’s Commandos During the 21 months of communist rule in 1939–41, approximately 320,000 residents were deported from the territories of Western Belarus and Western Ukraine to Siberia or the eastern districts of the USSR. The number of people arrested, including those sentenced to be shot, totaled 120,000. Thus, in under two years 3 per cent of the population of the newly annexed regions had been repressed.24 Many years later, the Ukrainian nationalist Volodymyr Kazanovsky, during his incarceration in a Soviet labor camp, told his fellow prisoner, the Soviet Jewish dissident Mikhail Kheifets: “When the Soviets arrived, in our [town of] Buchach they took away 150 people, everyone who was educated.”25 As of 1930, the population residing in the territory of Ukraine (within current boundaries) consisted of 75 per cent Ukrainians, 8 per cent Russians, 6.5 per cent Jews, and 5.4 per cent Poles. Belarusians made up 0.2 per cent of the population. The remaining population consisted of Germans, Romanians, Tatars, Greeks, and other minorities—a total of 5 per cent.26 On the whole, this ratio stayed the same until 1941. In the eastern and southern regions of the Ukrainian SSR, Russians were the dominant national minority, and in Western and Right-Bank Ukraine Poles and Jews were predominant. As of 1 January 1941, the Ukrainian SSR had a population of around 40.3 million, 68 per cent of whom were rural residents and 32 per cent urbanites.27 The Soviet–German war began on 22 June 1941. The Wehrmacht captured Kyiv on 19 September, and the easternmost parts of the Ukrainian SSR came under Nazi control in the summer of 1942. During 1941–44 the territory of Ukraine was under the rule of five different administrations. Transcarpathian Ukraine became part of Hungary; Northern Bukovina and Bessarabia were restored to Romania, and the territory between the Dnister and Southern Buh rivers was also ceded to the Romanians; in the latter region emerged the province of Transnistria with its capital in Odesa. Ukrainian Galicia became part of the Generalgouvernement headed by Hans Frank, with the capital at Cracow. The central, northern, southern, and north-eastern regions of the Ukrainian SSR, as well as the southern part of the Belarusian SSR, made up Reichskommissariat Ukraine (RKU). The city of Rivne became the administrative center of the RKU, the territory of which was formed in correspondence with the movement of Wehrmacht units deep into the heart of Ukraine. The area encompassed by the Reichskommissariat Ukraine reached a maximum between 1 September 1942 and early 1943: 339,000 square kilometers with a population of 16.9 million. This administrative area was divided into six general districts (Generalbezirk): Volyn-Podillia,

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Introduction  •  7 Zhytomyr, Kyiv, Dnipropetrovsk, Tavria, and Mykolaiv, which in turn consisted of regions (Gebiet), and were then further subdivided into counties (raions).28 During the entire Nazi occupation the five southern and eastern oblasts of the Ukrainian SSR were under the Wehrmacht’s control. The territories that were not occupied by the Germans were distinguished by the lowest level of brutality. In particular, the majority of the population in the south-western part of Ukraine, under Romanian occupation, generally lived in favorable circumstances, a fact that was duly noted on 6 August 1943 by O. Müller, a member of the “Eastern Ministry”: Oberleutnant Zelinovsky from Cossack Squadron 1/82 … In mid-July he visited the territory of Transnistria, which the Germans had handed over to the Romanians, and he reports … “There is practically no partisan movement here. The lives of the workers and peasants flow normally, much better than in other parts of Ukraine. Free trade is conducted without any kind of restrictions with a large number of all kinds of products, especially food, which allows the working population to make purchases.”29

A similar difference in the economic situation of people living under the German and Romanian occupations was noted by representatives of Soviet party organs.30 In late 1942 an agent of the People’s Commissariat of Internal Affairs (NKVD) of the Ukrainian SSR, codenamed “Activist,” directed attention to the relative freedom of movement: In villages occupied by Romanians you can walk about in the daytime and at night, play the accordion, organize dancing and singing […] On German-occupied territory, the regime is a thousand times harsher than under the Romanians. The free population is categorically forbidden to be on the streets past 20:00 hours; for being outside after 20:00 individuals are shot by the Germans without any kind of warning.31

In Eastern Ukraine, in the zone controlled by the Wehrmacht, the regime was harsher than in Romanian-occupied territory, but less repressive than on RKU territory. This was discussed in particular in an analytical note drafted on 24 January 1943 by the state security organs of the Ukrainian SSR: As opposed to the looting policy carried out by the fascist authorities in the rear areas of the occupied territory, the latter, in order to win over the

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8  •  Stalin’s Commandos sympathies of the population living in direct proximity to the front line, in the so-called “war zone,” implement a softer regime. a) In kind and cash taxes in the front-line zone were requisitioned in significantly smaller amounts than in the deep rear. A number of taxes requisitioned by the occupiers in the rear were not levied at all in the front-line zone. b) The occupiers carried out the confiscation of food products, cattle and, in separate cases, property through headmen and the local police, concealing their looting behind the actions of their accomplices. c) Those working field and other agricultural jobs were each issued 10–16 kg of grain per month, which is not done in rear-line regions. d) In order to create the semblance of a struggle against looting and “illegal” confiscations on the part of German, Italian, and Hungarian soldiers, the occupiers are carrying out “investigations” of cases of looting, thus appearing in the role of protectors and benefactors in the eyes of the population. e) The population is permitted to celebrate religious holidays and not work on those days, which is not done in the deep rear, especially at the height of field work. […] In connection with this German policy, a significant proportion of the population, the so-called “war zone,” is providing active assistance to the occupiers, causing difficulties for the passage of our agents throughout this zone, such as Red Army soldiers that have fled captivity or broken out of an encirclement, [and] helping the Germans to catch partisans.32

The Germans harassed the Ukrainian population of the General­ gouvernement least of all,33 a fact noted by the occupiers themselves34 as well as by Petro Vershyhora, the commander of the 1st Ukrainian Partisan Division: In relation to the Galicians, the Germans pursued a policy that was utterly different than in relation to the population of Polissia and Volyn [part of the RKU—A.G.]. a) The complete absence of mass terror and repressions; b) The supply of essential consumer goods through consumer cooperatives; c) A rather stable currency, the złoty, whose course the Germans supported on a suitable level. Simultaneously, the Germans zealously protected Galicia from the emergence of a partisan movement there, both Soviet partisans and

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Introduction  •  9 gangs of the U[krainian] I[nsurgent] A[rmy]. In the economic sense, the peasants in Galicia lived well.35

The head of the Reichskommissariat Ukraine was Erich Koch; he had created a regime that was so hated by the people that it worked in the partisans’ favour. Koch was also a Gauleiter, the party leader of Eastern Prussia. During the war years his Nazi Party colleagues dubbed him the “Second Stalin.” In the 1920s and 1930s he was nicknamed “Erich the Red”36 for his pro-communist activities and left-wing radical views. During the Soviet–German war Koch became known for his undisguised Ukrainophobia, as exemplified by the following boast: “I am known as a vicious dog.” Thus, the less brutal an occupier’s rule was in relation to the majority of the local population in any region of Ukraine, the more complicated it was for the partisans to operate there and even simply to survive. However, during the war command centers sought to expand the partisan fight in all the territories of the Ukrainian SSR and, in a number of cases, beyond its borders.

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1 The Organization and Leadership of Partisan Detachments in Ukraine, 1941–1944 Those who study Soviet partisan formations often encounter the problem of defining the word “partisan” even before moving on to the actual research. Sometimes it is difficult to distinguish between partisans operating in the rear of a fighting army and civilians who were simply hiding in the forests. It is far from correct to denote “unorganized” partisans as bona fide partisans; in a number of cases the term “survival groups” would be more apt. Such groups could comprise escaped prisoners of war (POWs) and stragglers who had been cut off behind enemy lines in the great encirclement battles (okruzhentsy) of 1941 and 1942 and were now living in forests; peasants who had fled their villages in an effort to evade the Nazis’ punitive measures; and people who were evading mobilization for forced labor in Germany. It is extremely difficult to study these types of “partisans” because there is no documentation associated with such detachments, and they were distinguished by low levels of subversive activity. At times, they even escaped the notice of representatives of the administration, and if their presence was noted, in documents they were often simply denoted as ordinary criminals. Mistrust toward “locals” is frequently encountered in the documents of Soviet partisans who were communicating with the “Center,” the leadership behind the front line in the Soviet rear (the “Soviet mainland”). For example, in his encrypted message to the “Soviet mainland” (bol′shaia zemlia) the commander of the large Borovik unit, Vasilii Ushakov, described the situation that was unfolding north of Kyiv oblast: “All these familial partisan detachments are not battle-worthy; they engage in drunkenness, the confiscation of property from the population … Disorder reigns in detachments. Because of illegal activities, cowardice, [and] drunkenness, most commanders do not wield authority among the fighters of [their] detachment, among the population. The populace does not join detachments.”1

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The Organization and Leadership of Partisan Detachments in Ukraine  •  11 Therefore, it must be stipulated from the outset that the focal point of this study is the partisans who were defined as such by the Soviets and who, during a significant portion of the war, communicated with the leading centers of the partisan movement. It was precisely these individuals who were defined by the higher party nomenklatura as model Soviet people and who received awards and encouragement; after the war some of them entered or returned to the Soviet ruling system. To this day, many cities in Ukraine, Russia, and Belarus bear the names of these decorated soldiers. The term “Soviet partisans” is applied to these combatants above all.

From the NKVD of the Ukrainian SSR to the Ukrainian Staff of the Partisan Movement As Colonel Bondarev, the head of an operational detachment of the Ukrainian Staff of the Partisan Movement, summarized in a report, “From its very first days the partisan movement in Ukraine was an organized movement.”2 In other words, partisan formations were created in keeping with concrete directives issued by the representatives of Soviet state bodies; they were essentially special subunits operating close to or deep behind the Wehrmacht’s rear lines. Throughout the war the direct leadership of the struggle behind the front was the purview of three structures: the Communist Party (Bolshevik) of Ukraine (CP(B)U), the organs of internal affairs and state security (NKVD–NKGB), and the army (the Workers’ and Peasants’ Red Army). However, their role and importance in the partisan war in 1941–44 changed continuously. The army played a tertiary role, especially in the period from 1942 to 1944. As a rule, even in the first year of the war, “army” partisans were part of the Red Army and directly subordinated to Red Army staffs, operating in the rear of the Wehrmacht in close cooperation with front-line units. This tactic was unjustified; as a consequence, during the first year of the war all these detachments, at least in Ukraine, were smashed or merged with the Red Army. For example, in the spring of 1942, 26 partisan detachments in the 18th Army of the Southern Front took part in defensive operations as ordinary combatant subunits.3 The role of the organs of state security and internal affairs in organizing partisan formations merits more detailed discussion. The creation of the Special Group (Osobaya Gruppa—OG) to oversee the conduct of the struggle behind the front lines, under People’s Commissar of Internal Affairs of the USSR, Lavrentii Beria, is recorded in a number of documents

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12  •  Stalin’s Commandos dated 18 June 1941, that is, before the outbreak of the Soviet–German war. The creation of this sub-department was formally announced by order of the NKVD USSR on 5 July 1941. Pavel Sudoplatov, a senior major of state security, was appointed to head the Special Group. The Special Group was charged with the following tasks: 1. Develop and implement reconnaissance and diversionary operations against Nazi Germany and its satellites; 2. Organize partisan warfare; 3. Create a network of agents in occupied territory; 4. Take charge of sending radiograms to German intelligence with the goal of spreading disinformation.4 On 3 September 1941 the Special Group was transformed into the autonomous 2nd Department of the NKVD USSR, headed by Sudoplatov. In the territory of the Union republics, including the Ukrainian SSR, fourth NKVD departments were created for the purpose of organizing partisan warfare. The head of the 4th Department of the NKVD of the Ukrainian SSR was Major Tymofii Strokach of state security, who at one time was the deputy of Vasyl Serhiienko, Minister of Internal Affairs of the Ukrainian SSR. The fourth republican NKVD departments were operationally subordinated to the above-mentioned 2nd Department of the NKVD USSR, headed by Sudoplatov. In January 1942 the 2nd Department of the NKVD USSR was turned into the 4th (so-called “partisan”) Directorate of the NKVD USSR, still headed by Sudoplatov, to whom the staffs of the destruction battalions (istrebitel′nye batal′ony) and partisan detachments were operationally subordinated. A further line of Strokach’s subordination may be traced during the first year of the war. The 4th Department (later: the 4th Directorate) of the NKVD of the Ukrainian SSR, despite its accountability to the 2nd Department (later: the 4th Directorate) was also subordinated to the leadership of the republican people’s commissariat. In 1941–43 the People’s Commissar of Internal Affairs of the Ukrainian SSR was Vasyl Serhiienko, but in fact during this period the people’s commissariat was headed by his deputy, Serhii Savchenko. The NKVD of the Ukrainian SSR was accountable to the People’s Commissariat of the Ukrainian SSR and, most importantly, to the Central Committee (CC) of the CP(B)U, that is, to its first secretary Nikita Khrushchev, even though partisan activities were under the direct control of Demian Korotchenko, the secretary of the CC CP(B)U.

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The Organization and Leadership of Partisan Detachments in Ukraine  •  13 Party organizations were also directly engaged in the organization of partisan detachments, including on the local level. In particular, on 1 November 1941 Marshal Semen Tymoshenko, the commander of the South-western Front, and Nikita Khrushchev, member of the Military Council of the South-western Front, handed down a resolution creating an operational group to direct partisan formations in the front-line zone. This group included mostly cadres of the CC CP(B)U.5 However, this structure did not play any significant role. According to Viacheslav Boiarsky, a staff member of the Academy of Border Troops of the Federal Security Service of the Russian Federation (FSB), the successor agency to the Committee for State Security (KGB), “throughout 1941 … 90 per cent of partisan detachments, [and] destruction, subversive, and reconnaissance groups were trained and left behind in the enemy’s rear or were redeployed there by the NKVD–NKGB organs. They were the ones who directed them.”6 Although this view is too simplistic, it is entirely understandable that Boiarsky might have reached such a conclusion. For example, in a document issued by the NKVD USSR entitled “A List of Active Partisan Detachments Formed by the Organs of the NKVD USSR as of 15/VI-[19]42,”7 these detachments included not only those that were commanded by NKVD officers but also formations that were headed by representatives of the party and the Soviet nomenklatura (including the distinguished future partisan commanders Sydir Kovpak and Oleksii Fedorov). In other words, as the highest leadership of the NKVD sought to prove, all partisan detachments, without exception, which were also trained by the party organs of Ukraine, were created by the NKVD or, at the very least, with its active participation. Meanwhile, a memorandum drafted by the CC CP(B)U during this same period designates all the detachments and subversive groups that were formed in Ukraine both by the NKVD and the Communist Party as having been created “by the CC CP(B)U through oblast and raion party committees.”8 The number of detachments in both documents is identical, and the same surnames of detachment commanders are listed. Thus, the majority of Ukraine’s detachments were created as a result of close cooperation between the NKVD of the Ukrainian SSR and local party organizations— oblast, city, and raion committees of the CP(B)U. Therefore, it is difficult to single out the dominant leading organization. Everything depended on the situation at the local level, which the central bodies controlled in a manner that was far from ideal. What is important to note about partisan detachments in the first year of the war is not so much the question of who was the first to organize and

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14  •  Stalin’s Commandos lead them; rather, the crucial fact is that they were created simultaneously by several organizations. As Battalion Commissar Ivan Syromolotny, the head of the 8th Department of the Political Directorate of the Southern Front, noted in his report, during the first year of the war the organizational period for forming partisan detachments encountered a number of obstacles and ambiguities. In the organization of partisan formations were engaged oblast party committees, oblast directorates of the NKVD, 8th Departments of the Political Directorate, and individual departments, intelligence departments [of the staffs of the fronts and the armies—A.G.]. […] The role and responsibility of each of these organizations should be demarcated.9

By all appearances, the supreme arbiter among all these state organizations, Joseph Stalin, was poorly informed about events transpiring in the enemy’s rear. According to Karel Berkhoff, the Soviet leader “believed that partisans could not significantly influence the military struggle at the front.”10 Of course, Stalin’s priorities were his leadership of the Red Army, international relations, and the economic situation in the Soviet rear. According to the memoirs of partisan commander Aleksandr Saburov, during a meeting between the Supreme Commander in Chief and partisan commanders in early September 1942, Stalin expressed surprise at the availability of mortars and implements in large partisan units.11 This is an indication of how poorly informed he was on the struggle behind the front lines. Moreover, at the time Stalin expressed few opinions on the partisan struggle, especially in 1941–42, which indirectly confirms the weak interest of the head of the State Defense Committee (GKO) in questions relating to partisan formations. The ambiguity surrounding questions of leadership was increased by the tense interdepartmental struggle among the party, army, and Chekist nomenklatura. The victory of the party nomenklatura in this rivalry occurred within a year of the beginning of the Soviet–German war. On 30 May 1942 the Central Staff of the Partisan Movement (TsShPD) was created at the order of the Supreme Commander in Chief under the leadership of First Secretary of the CC CPB Panteleimon Ponomarenko. The Paris-based researcher Volodymyr Kosyk holds the opinion that the creation of the TsShPD was the result of Moscow’s efforts to establish control over partisan formations.12 However, before the creation of the TsShPD, since the beginning of the war, detachments had already been created by the party and state apparatus, and were also being directed from behind the front line. The formation of the Central Staff of the Partisan Movement was a step toward the unification of control over the subversive struggle behind the front line.

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The Organization and Leadership of Partisan Detachments in Ukraine  •  15 Subordinated to the TsShPD were six republican or regional (front-line) staffs,13 including the Ukrainian Staff of the Partisan Movement, which was created on 20 June 1942. One representative each from the party apparatus, the NKVD, and the Red Army was appointed to the top three posts of each staff, thus establishing an unofficial standard. The head of the UShPD was state security’s Major Tymofii Strokach; his first two deputies were Musii Spivak, secretary of the CC CP(B)U, and Colonel Vinogradov, head of the Intelligence Department of the South-western Staff. On the whole, the staffs of the partisan movement were made up of the representatives of the above-mentioned three structures. The Ukrainian Staff of the Partisan Movement was subordinated to the Central Staff of the Partisan Movement, and—with regard to operations and questions relating to cadre staffing and technical and materiel supply—to the Military Council of the South-western Staff. One of the members of this council was Khrushchev, who, as noted earlier, also headed Ukraine’s party apparatus, to which the UShPD was accountable from the very beginning. Relations between him and Strokach became business-like and confidential. The introduction of unity of command and the creation of a more or less orderly system of control over the struggle behind the front line allowed the Soviet authorities to streamline the leadership of the partisans. On the other hand, the influence of the party nomenklatura (including the CC CP(B)U), which was unskilled in military terms, on the partisans’ operational activities had a negative impact on the level of military planning and the conduct of combat actions. Painful reorganization took place at the local level as well. A joint directive issued on 7 July 1942 by the Acting Minister of Internal Affairs of the Ukrainian SSR, Serhii Savchenko, and the head of the UShPD, Tymofii Strokach, states that, in connection with the creation of the Ukrainian Staff, “the NKVD administration must immediately hand over all partisan detachments found both on the front line as well as those operating in the enemy’s rear to the heads of corresponding operational groups, fronts, and armies according to the territorial principle.”14 Agents, residents, and secret addresses—the components of the intelligence network of the NKVD of the Ukrainian SSR—were not subject to transfer to the UShPD’s authority. This severed detachments from the secret-agent network and had a negative influence on the quality of the partisans’ intelligence activities. In turn, the NKVD agent network was deprived of support from partisan detachments. In particular, it became impossible to use the partisans’ portable radio transmitters to communicate with the Soviet mainland. At the same time, the reduction of the NKVD’s role led to some improvement in the attitudes of the personnel of some partisan detachments.

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16  •  Stalin’s Commandos For example, the commanders of the large Sumy unit, Sydir Kovpak and Semen Rudnev, were persistently hostile to the representatives of the interior and state security ministries. This was explained by the fact that Rudnev had been arrested during a wave of repressions before the war and imprisoned. According to some sources, Kovpak too had been arrested.15 One way or another, centralization of the leadership led to the emergence of a system of subjection and subordination and horizontal coordination that local partisan chieftains had created earlier, depending on the situation and existence of communications with the Center. Between June and July 1942 the largest, independently operating types of partisan unit were divided into detachments. In a number of cases, detachments were consolidated into partisan brigades; there were two such brigades in Ukraine. In June– July 1942 three large units were subordinated to the UShPD under the command of Oleksii Fedorov, Sydir Kovpak (Sumy) and Aleksandr Saburov (United). These three units consisted of 16 detachments. Besides them, 14 independent detachments were in communication with the UShPD. Detachments acquired a military structure, and were divided into platoons, companies, and squads. The UShPD issued a special order forbidding the naming of detachments and large units after commanders’ surnames. Meanwhile, the formation of the UShPD was carried out during the course of the Wehrmacht’s summer offensive. For some time the staff existed literally “on the move.” This partly explains the relative ineffectualness16 of its work during the first year of its existence. On 28 September 1942, in accordance with Stalin’s decision, other republican staffs were created along with the UShPD; these were supposed to be located in Moscow. In October the Ukrainian Staff of the Partisan Movement was also relocated to Moscow, which boosted the effectiveness of its work. In keeping with Stalin’s order, from the fall of 1942 republican staffs of the partisan movement were subordinated to the central committees of republican communist parties,17 which served to augment the role of the party nomenklatura in managing the struggle behind the front line. On 7 March 1943 the State Defense Committee of the USSR disbanded the Central Staff of the Partisan Movement; a month later, on 17 April, it was restored. However, at this very time the subordination of the Ukrainian Staff of the Partisan Movement to the Central Staff was canceled.18 Strokach’s subordination to Ponomarenko was formally ended, and henceforth the former had two superiors: Stalin, the head of the Command of the Supreme Commander in Chief, and Khrushchev, first secretary of the CC CP(B)U. Then, as a result of an order issued by the Supreme Commander in Chief on 13 January 1944, the Central Staff of the Partisan Movement was finally abolished.

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The Organization and Leadership of Partisan Detachments in Ukraine  •  17 The autonomous nature of the Ukrainian Staff of the Partisan Movement stemmed from the protracted personal conflict between Khrushchev, who was in charge of its activities, and Ponomarenko. In the Soviet system of government Khrushchev both officially and unofficially wielded far more authority than Ponomarenko; he also had a more flexible nature. Out of a desire, typical of a member of the Soviet nomenklatura, to augment his plenary powers, Khrushchev removed the Ukrainian Staff from the influence of his party competitor. In addition, the Ukrainian SSR was always the second most important republic of the Soviet Union. It is possible that the special status of the UShPD was Stalin’s way of throwing a bone to the autonomist aspirations of Ukrainian apparatchiks. The Ukrainian Staff of the Partisan Movement was the largest of all the regional and republican staffs. In mid-1943 the UShPD staff numbered 143 people, including 90 top-, senior-, and middle-ranking officials; two junior and rank-and-file members; and 51 hired staffers.19 However, as will be demonstrated later, the number of Ukrainian partisans throughout the entire occupation period was significantly smaller than the number of partisans who were operating in Belarus and Russia. The point was that the top Soviet leadership viewed republican staffs of the partisan movement not simply as military organizations but also as military-political bodies whose size corresponded to a republic’s political importance. The directive concerning the UShPD’s independence from the TsShPD was the final step. In fact, thanks to Khrushchev’s patronage, the Ukrainian Staff was autonomous until the spring of 1943. This partly explains why the Soviet partisan war was more effective in Ukraine than in Belarus or Russia. Ponomarenko did not possess any military leadership qualities. According to Strokach’s deputy, the saboteur Ilya Starinov, this cadre political worker and head of the Central Staff of the Partisan Movement never commanded a company and did not complete a military academy. The Belarusian partisans “were commanded by” the head of the BShPD [Belarusian Staff of the Partisan Movement], P. Z. Kalinin, who would not even have been entrusted with a platoon in the Red Army, yet he was assigned to command an army whose numerical strength in 1943 exceeded 100,000 armed partisans. […] The plan of operations developed by the TsShPD and the staffs of the partisan movement subordinated to it were not plans for carrying out organized military actions; rather, they resembled party resolutions concerning the execution of sowing and harvesting work … P. K. Ponomarenko was such a partocrat, cut from the Stalinist cloth, that he knows everything and can do everything.20

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18  •  Stalin’s Commandos Tymofii Strokach may be described somewhat differently. The information in his personnel file attests to the fact that he was a flexible and circumspect leader. Strokach’s parents moved from the Kyiv region to the Soviet Far East in 1899. A Ukrainian by birth, he was born into a family of poor peasants in the village of Astrakhanka in Khankai raion, Ussuri oblast, in 1903. He completed three grades at the village school, and after the death of his father, who, according to Tymofii’s own official eyewitness testimony, was killed “by a terrorist gang because he was an organizer of an agricultural commune,” the future head of the Ukrainian Staff of the Partisan Movement worked as a seasonal laborer. In 1924 he volunteered for the Border Troops of the Joint State Political Directorate (OGPU). Strokach graduated from the Border Troops school in Minsk (1925–27) with the rank of “commander of OGPU border troops.” In 1932–33 he attended officer training courses at the NKVD Higher Border Troops School in Moscow, from where he graduated with the rank of “general commander of NKVD troops.” He spent his entire career in the Border Troops, climbing the career ladder from a rank-and-file soldier in the Soviet Far East (1924) to Deputy Minister of Internal Affairs of the Ukrainian SSR (1940–42). A testimonial written after the war by the CC CP(B)U noted that Strokach attained this post because he was “one of the best and [most] capable commanders of the NKVD Border Troops, possessing vast experience of operational and Chekist work.”21 In 1940 Strokach was awarded the Order of the Red Star, very likely for his operations targeting the nationalist underground in Western Ukraine. In 1942 he received the Order of Lenin for his contributions to the organization of the partisan struggle.22 Besides the required character traits and qualifications of a military commander, the head of the UShPD possessed stores of valuable personal experience. Over a period of 35 days spread over September and October 1941, he and a group of leaders and agents of the NKVD of the Ukrainian SSR ended up encircled in Kyiv. Fighting his way out of the encirclement, he led 338 men into the Soviet rear. According to some sources, Strokach was awarded the above-mentioned Order of Lenin for that specific “rescue operation,” which saved the life of People’s Commissar Vasyl Serhiienko.23 The autonomy of the Ukrainian partisans was manifested in the fact that within UShPD detachments there were no special departments subordinated to the NKVD or—from April 1943—to the People’s Commissariat for State Security (NKGB). On this question Khrushchev had Strokach’s full support against the plenary powers of those bodies. Detachments that still had special departments were subordinated not to the NKVD–NKGB but to the commander of a detachment or directly to the Ukrainian Staff of the

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The Organization and Leadership of Partisan Detachments in Ukraine  •  19 Partisan Movement.24 The functions of the “specials” consisted of waging a struggle against the penetration of enemy agents (counterintelligence) and the vetting for political reliability of the personnel of partisan detachments. Despite the absence of special NKVD–NKGB departments, the Germans did not achieve any outstanding successes in planting agents in large units of the UShPD. Nor were any Ukrainian red partisan commanders flagged for disloyalty to the Soviet authorities in 1943–44. Rather, it is clear that has an independent repressive-punitive and controlling structure been present, this could have sown uncertainty in partisan commanders, hobbled their initiative, and subverted the army principle of undivided authority, which was already being undermined by the presence of commissars in detachments. It would appear, therefore, that the absence of “specials” as a kind of “watchful eye of the NKVD” had a positive effect on the effectiveness of the struggle waged by UShPD formations. Returning to the subject of control over partisan detachments, the institution of Ukrainian Staff representations at the various fronts, which operated near Ukraine or on its territory, will be described. Depending on the reorganization of the Red Army, operational groups and, later, UShPD offices in 1942–44 functioned under the military councils of: 1) the South-western and Western fronts (1942); 2) Briansk, Voronezh, Northern Caucasus, and South-western fronts (1942–43); 3) Voronezh, South-western, and Southern fronts (1943); and 4) the 1st, 2nd, 3rd, and 4th Ukrainian fronts (1943–44). In 1943–44 some detachments, large units and groups of the UShPD were operationally subordinated directly to the UShPD headquarters, while others—comprising on average approximately one-third of the personnel of all partisan formations— were operationally subordinated to UShPD offices based at the fronts. They carried out combat activities in keeping with directives issued by the front command, coordinating plans with the UShPD, and reporting to Strokach on a regular basis—once every two weeks. This element in the management of Ukraine’s red partisans improved the interaction between army and partisan detachments and large units.25 Oblast-based staffs of the partisan movement must be mentioned. The first oblast staffs were formally created by the UShPD in late 1942, but in fact this system began functioning only in 1943, lasting practically until the end of the German occupation. According to the Ukrainian historians Anatolii Kentii and Volodymyr Lozytsky, In the majority of cases, the chiefs of oblast staffs were commanders of core, large partisan units and secretaries of underground oblast committees of the CP(B)U. Besides party workers, commanders and commissars of

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20  •  Stalin’s Commandos large partisan units were also appointed as members of staffs. For reasons of operational necessity, the chief of an oblast staff, subordinated both to the CP(B)U and the UShPD, coordinated the activities of his partisan formations with the representatives of the UShPD attached to military councils of fronts.26

In fact, oblast staffs were an instrument of party control over partisan formations, which led, among other things, to the appointment of a higher percentage of party nomenklatura members to various staffs. The exact powers of staff leaderships were not all that clear, inasmuch as commanders of large units and independent brigades, detachments and groups were also assigned tasks directed by the UShPD or its representatives at the fronts (see Diagram 5). This state of affairs sparked perpetual conflicts between partisan commanders and chiefs of oblast staffs. Formations were quite mobile and their location changed frequently. For this reason, in a number of cases it was simply not clear whether a chief of an oblast staff had the right to issue instructions to a commander of a large partisan unit temporarily based on the territory of an oblast.27 Therefore, it may be assumed that the creation of oblast staffs for the optimization of control over partisan detachments was not a judicious move. In December 1943 the Ukrainian Staff of the Partisan Movement was transferred from Moscow to Kyiv to be closer to the front line. In August 1944 the entire territory of Ukraine was occupied by the Red Army. In the new circumstances, the UShPD and its various offices based at the fronts were assigned the task of directing detachments operating on the territories of Czechoslovakia and Hungary (Transcarpathian Ukraine). On 20 October 1944 the Politburo of the CC CP(B)U issued a resolution cutting back the staffs of the UShPD. Point 5 of this document states: The personnel of the Ukrainian Staff of the Partisan Movement and its subdivisions subject to cutbacks are to be sent: a) officer personnel to the NKVD of the Ukrainian SSR for staffing the Directorate for the Struggle against Banditry in Ukraine [mostly an armed struggle against the Ukrainian insurgents—A.G.]; b) party and Soviet workers—to the department of cadres of the CC CP(B)U.28

On 23 December 1944 the CC CP(B)U adopted a resolution disbanding the Ukrainian Staff of the Partisan Movement, which took effect on 1 January 1945.

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The Organization and Leadership of Partisan Detachments in Ukraine  •  21

The Role of the NKVD USSR, NKGB Ukrainian SSR, and the GRU in the Partisan Struggle A number of researchers are loath to call groups of the NKVD–NKGB USSR and the Intelligence Directorate of the Red Army “partisan detachments.” However, despite the fact that both the most important and secondary tasks of the three above-mentioned structures were varied, to this day no historian has offered a single cogent argument to explain why some detachments (UShPD) should be called “partisan,” while others (NKGB, the Intelligence Directorate of the General Staff of the Red Army) should be described by such terms as “saboteurs,” “intelligence agents,” etc. Notwithstanding the divergence in their operational priorities, which will be shown below, there was no fundamental difference between the partisans of the military intelligence organizations—GRU, state security—NKVD USSR, and the TsShPD and UShPD. Furthermore, in the documents generated by both foes and allies of the red partisans—Ukrainian and Polish nationalists, and German and Romanian occupiers, respectively—all these types of Soviet formations are called by the identical term “partisans,” and in the memoirs of the leaders of these detachments, they call themselves “partisans” too. *** During the first year of the war, prior to the creation of the TsShPD, a senior major of state security, Pavel Sudoplatov, coordinated all the activities of the republican NKVD branches that were tasked with creating and directing partisan detachments. After the special group headed by Sudoplatov had been reformed several times, it was transformed into the 4th Directorate of the NKVD USSR. In 1941–42 Sudoplatov’s direct superior was Lavrentii Beria, Minister of Internal Affairs of the USSR, and from 14 April 1943, after the People’s Commissariat of State Security was separated from the NKVD, the head of the newly created NKGB became Vsevolod Merkulov; in other words, the 4th Directorate of the NKVD was transferred to the control of the NKGB. During the course of World War II Sudoplatov was responsible for cadres and resources that were not answerable to republican ministries of internal affairs. One such formation was the Independent Special Purpose Motorized Rifle Brigade (OMSBON), which took part in the partisan war on the occupied territories of the Soviet Union. Formed from the brigade were independent detachments slated for actions at the front, although for the most part, especially from the early months of 1942, these were special groups sent to operate behind the enemy’s rear. Their ranks were frequently expanded by the influx of local residents, stragglers cut off behind enemy

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22  •  Stalin’s Commandos lines and escaped POWs: “During the war years, the 4th Directorate trained at the OMSBON base 212 special detachments and 2,222 groups totaling nearly 15,000 men (including 7,316 OMSBON fighters). With their forces, 1,084 combat operations were carried out.”29 In other words, combat activity was not the chief task of OMSBON detachments. If we assume that all 212 of these special detachments were located for one year in the Germans’ rear, and the 2,222 special groups did not carry out any operations at all, then it would appear that each partisan detachment of the 4th Directorate of the NKVD–NKGB USSR carried out a combat operation once every two months on average. Even factoring in all possible errors, such combat activity can hardly be called intensive. That said, however, it cannot be denied that some individual groups of the NKVD–NKGB USSR had clear-cut combat missions. In a certain sense, the Pobediteli (“Victors”) Detachment of the NKGB USSR, commanded by Dmitrii Medvedev, was a “model” unit. According to the detachment’s own reports, during the first nine months of 1943, located deep behind the German rear lines, it carried out 44 combat and subversive (sabotage) operations30—that is, an average of one every six days. Such a low-intensity level of combat activity for any detachment subordinated to the UShPD is simply inconceivable. Reminiscing about the Pobediteli Detachment, partisan commander Petro Vershyhora, who was subordinated to the UShPD, recalled that Medvedev’s detachment did not carry out subversive activities: “It waged battles only when the enemy imposed [them] … But, on the other hand, Medvedev was very likely better informed of the enemy’s doings in Ukraine than others. The main task of this detachment was deep reconnaissance.”31 This trend is attested by the conflict that emerged between the commander of the Khodoki (“Walkers”) Detachment of the NKGB USSR, Evgenii Mirkovsky, and the commander of the large Borovik partisan unit of the UShPD, Vasilii Ushakov. The latter reported to Stalin that Mirkovsky, who was luring rank-and-file partisans to his detachment, “is telling local partisans to abandon [Ushakov’s] detachment [for Merkulov’s] detachment, claiming that [in Ushakov’s] it is necessary to fight, but in his they will be carrying out local reconnaissance.”32 The command staff of the detachments forwarded the data obtained during the course of secret-agent activities to the 4th Directorate of the NKVD–NKGB USSR in Moscow. The head of the directorate, Pavel Sudoplatov, was born in 1907 into a mixed Russian-Ukrainian family in Melitopil, Ukraine. At the age of 12 he ran away from home and enlisted in the Red Army. At the age of 14 he began working in the Special Department of the Cheka because,

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The Organization and Leadership of Partisan Detachments in Ukraine  •  23 unlike many, he could read and write. According to some sources, he spent practically his entire Chekist career in the 1920s and 1930s fighting against Ukrainian parties, including nationalist ones. During one of his protracted secret-agent periods Sudoplatov was able to win the trust of Yevhen Konovalets, leader of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists, whom he personally blew up with a package bomb in Rotterdam in 1938.33 Later, Sudoplatov orchestrated the murder of Lev (Leon) Trotsky. Thus, it comes as no surprise that the top priority of the 4th Directorate of the NKVD–NKGB USSR was terrorism. Secret agents’ painstaking intelligence gathering was used for this very purpose. For obvious reasons, Soviet historians did not always make use of the generally accepted and correct terminology in defining this phenomenon. They even resorted to euphemisms—using, for example, the term “subversive acts” (diversii) to describe the targeted killing of civilians, or the term “liquidations” (likvidatsii), which were committed for the most part by people who did not wear Soviet military uniforms: “On the basis of verdicts handed down by partisans, OMSBON-ites carried out 87 acts of retribution.”34 Various data indicate that the targets of terrorist acts fell mostly into three categories of individuals: representatives of the civilian occupation administration, high-ranking officers of the Wehrmacht and the Nazi defense corps (Schutzstaffel—SS), and the most important political émigrés and Soviet collaborators. For example, in December 1941, in the city of Zhizdra, Kaluga oblast, in the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic (RSFSR), partisans under Medvedev’s control captured the son of Prince Lvov, a member of the Fourth State Duma and chairman of the Provisional Government. As Medvedev recalled later, “The prince was sent to Moscow on an R-F plane, which the command set down for the first time on occupied territory on a landing strip specially prepared by us. The prince was dressed in a medic’s uniform (he wore fine civilian clothing, but with a band emblazoned with a red star).”35 Medvedev was then summoned to Moscow, where the Pobediteli Detachment, which had been formed at the OMSBON base, was placed under his control and transferred to Western Ukraine. By all accounts, this time Medvedev’s detachment was ordered to assassinate Erich Koch, the head of Reichskommissariat Ukraine (a task that did not exclude less important missions, including attempts made on the life of General Andrei Vlasov, the future head of the Committee for the Liberation of the Peoples of Russia, KONR).36 During negotiations with Taras “Bulba” (Borovets), the leader of a Ukrainian anti-Soviet insurgent detachment that was operating in the Volyn region in the fall of 1942, Medvedev did everything

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24  •  Stalin’s Commandos in his power to convince him to kill Koch.37 Medvedev’s detachment also had at its disposal an instrument for carrying out this special mission: Nikolai Kuznetsov, who was operating in Rivne in the guise of a German officer named Paul Ziebert. Despite numerous attempts, the mission was never carried out. In 1943–44, Kuznetsov carried out a number of terrorist acts targeting representatives of the civilian occupation administration. For that reason, the activities of the special Pobediteli Detachment earned the highest praise from the leadership of the NKGB USSR. Medvedev, the organizer behind these killings, and Kuznetsov, who carried them out, were each awarded the Gold Star of the Hero of the Soviet Union. In addition to Medvedev’s detachment, five other detachments of the NKVD–NKGB USSR operated in Ukraine during the war years, and their commanders were also awarded the title of Hero of the Soviet Union: Okhotniki (“Hunters”: Commander Mykola Prokopiuk); Olimp (“Olympus”: Viktor Karasev); Khodoki (“Walkers”: Evgenii Mirkovsky); Fort (Vladimir Molodtsov); and Marshrutniki (“Itinerants”: Viktor Liagin). Not all documents on all these groups are accessible at the present time. However, even those data that are available to contemporary researchers lead one to conclude that during the course of its activities behind the front the NKGB did not renounce its main “type of activity”—the struggle against the “internal enemy.” In July 1943 the Khodoki Detachment was assigned to collect data on and penetrate the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists. Prior to this mission, a special group headed by Muravev arrived at the detachment’s base, which had penetrated the OUN in the Berdychiv area and captured one of its local leaders, Kuks, who was forced to reveal the whereabouts of secret locations and passwords used by the nationalists. In October 1943 Mirkovsky’s detachment was stationed in the vicinity of Sarny, Rivne oblast, where, after exposing an underground nationalist network in Rokytne raion, it liquidated nearly 20 leading Banderite activists, a faction of the OUN. Furthermore, according to the accounts of the Chekists themselves, nationalists who had contacts in the intelligence services of the large Sumy and Zhytomyr units of the UShPD, and who turned out to be their couriers, were exposed. The detachment drew up lists of nearly 200 OUN activists, and thanks to this information compiled by the Chekists, the Soviet secret police agencies averted an attempt by the Banderites on the life of Hero of the Soviet Union V. Yaremchuk, commander of a subversive detachment of the UShPD.38 The historian Boris Sokolov has a more reserved view of the activities of detachments that were subordinated to the staffs of the partisan movements: “Indeed, especially effective were the operations [that were carried out]

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The Organization and Leadership of Partisan Detachments in Ukraine  •  25 not by numerically strong but poorly trained and equipped detachments, but the actions of small, specially trained subversive-terrorist groups using state-of-the-art methods of struggle, which blew up military facilities and destroyed high-ranking officials of the occupation administration.”39 He is referring, of course, to the special groups of the NKVD–NKGB USSR. In relation to the completed missions of the 4th Directorate, the following question arises: To what extent was terrorism, especially in its active form, considered reasonable from the standpoint of the interests of the communist regime? According to Soviet historians, each of these terrorist acts “was preceded by thorough intelligence gathering, the search for concrete executors, the development of various action scenarios, and equipping with combat devices (mines, detonating fuses, explosives, weapons, etc.). In this work the staffs and the intelligence service of special detachments and special groups relied on the active assistance of underground members and couriers.”40 In the process, even an unsuccessful terrorist act—for example, even one limited by the fact that dispatched agents had revealed their presence—would spark a burst of activity on the part of the German secret services, indicating the real direction of their counterintelligence measures, and, as a result, either impeded the further work of the organized secret-agent network or utterly disrupted it. At the same time, there was great value in the reconnaissance information that was obtained by secret agents attached to special detachments of the NKVD–NKGB. Moreover, the importance and professionalism, for example, of officials in the German civilian occupation administration are strongly suspect. These were not specialists but Nazi functionaries, and as such they did not possess the knowledge, skills, and acquired habits required for exploiting the occupied territories of the USSR.41 If one considers the Nazis’ incompetence and tendency towards brutality, then it may be said that they inadvertently rendered a specific service to the Stalinist regime by presenting it as the “lesser evil” to the population of the occupied territories. Thus, it may be assumed that, for example, the intelligence data that Nikolai Kuznetsov could and did obtain, which he forwarded to the Center in 1944–45 and even later, were much more valuable, say, for the Red Army’s conduct of the war at the front or for the partisans operating in the Wehrmacht’s rear than the lives of those who were killed by Kuznetsov’s group or by officials and military personnel. Even if one takes into account the “moral and psychological” impact of terrorist acts on the Third Reich’s military and occupational apparatuses, one can say that this type of terrorism harmed the general effectiveness of the 4th Directorate of the NKVD–NKGB USSR and the struggle behind the front lines. ***

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26  •  Stalin’s Commandos A few words must be said about the struggle behind the front lines which was waged by republican branches of the NKVD–NKGB in 1942–44. In 1941–42, during the Red Army’s retreat, the NKVD of the Ukrainian SSR ordered 12,726 agents—including 43 residents controlling 644 agents, as well as other types of agents, with 9,541 “agents with diverse missions”—to remain at the rear of the Wehrmacht. Having transferred the partisan detachments to the Ukrainian Staff of the Partisan Movement, the 4th Directorate of the NKVD of the Ukrainian SSR, in keeping with its designated mission, continued the work that had been launched in the very first days of the war: sending into the enemy’s rear secret-agent “resident” stations (rezidentury), agents, subversiveintelligence groups and, finally, from 1943 onwards, operational Chekist groups and special detachments.42 In 1941–43 the NKVD–NKGB of the Ukrainian SSR dispatched to the enemy’s rear 2,030 solo agents as well as 29 resident stations totaling 89 people. During the Soviet–German war the 4th Directorate issued a total of 355 information documents for the NKVD–NKGB USSR and front-line commanders, which were based on material supplied by secret agents and special groups operating in the Wehrmacht’s rear. During the war the NKVD–NKGB of the Ukrainian SSR sent 153 radio operators (including 62 for the period of 1941–43 alone) behind German lines, where they carried out 7,718 radiogram exchanges, including 1,036 in 1941–43.43 From mid-1942 to mid-1943 the subversive activities of the NKVD of the Ukrainian SSR were insignificant. Attention was paid mostly to establishing and expanding the secret-agent network; the greatest interest was sparked by the receipt of politically significant information from the German rear and data on the enemy’s counterintelligence measures. Another task is revealed in a document entitled “Regulations about the Functions of the 4th Department of that Commissariat,” issued by the NKGB of the Ukrainian SSR on 16 October 1943. The following is listed among the duties of the 2nd Department of the 4th Directorate: “Carries out work on ‘D’ and ‘T’ on the occupied territories. Conducts investigations of traitors and turncoats from among the secret agents of the 4th Directorate of the NKGB of the Ukrainian SSR.”44 The initial “D” is the departmental designation for diversions, or subversive activities, and the initial “T” stands for terrorism. For example, the tasks of the five-man operational Chekist group Za Rodinu (“For the Motherland”), which operated from the base of Aleksandr Saburov’s large unit, included the processing of German intelligence

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The Organization and Leadership of Partisan Detachments in Ukraine  •  27 and counterintelligence structures, as well as formations of the Russian Liberation Army.45 Within three months of being stationed in the Germans’ rear, a special group clarified and created the conditions for dispatching a number of other operational Chekist groups behind the Germans’ lines. One of them was described thus: “A special secret-agent group composed of 13 people with two radio stations, under the leadership of ‘Koretsky’, a former Chekist. ‘Koretsky’s’ group has been dispatched to the Rivne area with the special task related to ‘T’.”46 It would not be redundant to mention here that Rivne was the Nazi capital of Ukraine, and a large contingent of high-ranking officials was permanently based there. After the Red Army occupied Ukraine, the eight-man operational Chekist group Visla (“Vistula”) commanded by Aleksei Lotov (“Sobinov”) was sent to the Germans’ rear on the territory of Western Poland. Its tasks included the “liquidation of the officer personnel of the German army, staff members of reconnaissance-punitive organs and the enemy’s state apparatus, [and] the heads of the National-Socialist Party of Germany.”47 The activities of the 4th Directorate of the NKGB of the Ukrainian SSR were carried out in keeping with general instructions issued by Pavel Sudoplatov, the head of the 4th Directorate. Among the secondary tasks assigned to special groups of the Ukrainian NKGB were counterintelligence activities within partisan formations (including those targeting the UPA and the AK), secret-agent infiltration of Polish and Ukrainian nationalist formations,48 and, in a number of cases, subversive acts. A few words about the history of these groups’ activities are necessary here. To all appearances, by early 1943 relevant specialists (and the technology at their disposal) who were assigned to the republic’s NKVD apparatuses had been “used up,” on the one hand, by the staffs of the partisan movement, and, on the other, by the NKVD USSR. This may explain the fact that the tasks assigned on 10 February 1943 were only completed by the fall of that year, by which time the NKVD apparatus had already been separated into the NKVD and NKGB. On 20 September 1943 the Druzhba (“Friendship”) reconnaissance group of the NKGB of the Ukrainian SSR, commanded by N. Onyshchuk, was dispatched to the base of M. Taranushchenko’s large UShPD unit in Chernihiv oblast. It operated in Chernihiv and Kyiv oblasts, interacting with the large UShPD unit commanded by I. Khytrychenko, and in 1944, together with the 1st Ukrainian Partisan Division led by P. Vershyhora, it carried out a raid into Ukraine’s western oblasts, Poland, and Belarus. In 1943–44 the Volyntsi (“Volynians”), a five-man operational-intelligence group commanded by Captain P. Formanchuk, operated from the base

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28  •  Stalin’s Commandos of Ivan Fedorov’s large unit. From May 1944 this group, which had expanded to 120 fighters, operated independently on the territory of Poland and partly in Hungary. In 1943–44 the Unitartsy (“Unitarians”), a four-man operational-intelligence group of the NKGB of the Ukrainian SSR, commanded by Captain V. Khondamko, operated from the base of I. Shitov’s large unit of the UShPD, while the Razgrom (“Rout”) group commanded by Captain H. Burlachenko (four men) operated out of V. Behma’s large unit.49 The names of the other special groups operating in the Germans’ rear, primarily out of the bases of UShPD detachments, were: Udar (“Strike”), Neulovimie (“The Elusive Ones”), Zadnestrovtsy (“Men from beyond the Dnister River”), Orel (“Eagle”), and Zaitseva (“Zaitsev’s Men”). “The leadership staff of these operational groups was filled mainly by operational workers of NKGB organs, and for the most part by operational staff of the 4th Directorate of the NKGB of the Ukrainian SSR.”50 The first point in the Ukrainian NKGB’s summarizing report on its activities during the war states: “Twenty-five leading anti-Soviet figures and individuals of the command staff of the German armies were liquidated”; two of them in 1942, three in 1944, and 16 in 1945 (in Poland, Czechoslovakia, and Germany).51 Thus, the terrorist activities of this state security service were entirely comparable to the measures implemented by the NKGB USSR in their corresponding operational zone. *** As of 22 June 1941 all of the Red Army’s intelligence activity was concentrated within the Intelligence Directorate of the General Staff of the Workers’ and Peasants’ Red Army (RU GSh RKKA). Not only were front-line intelligence organs subordinated to it, but so too were intelligence services based in the territories of other states. From June 1940 to November 1941 the head of the Red Army was Filipp Golikov, whose successor from November 1941 to August 1942 was Major-General Aleksei Panfilov, followed by LieutenantGeneral Ivan Ilichev, who acceded to this post in August 1942. Among the various types of activities carried out by the Red Army and its subordinated structures was the dispatching of reconnaissance or reconnaissance-subversive groups to an occupied territory. In January 1942, after the Battle of Moscow, the State Defense Com­ mittee examined military intelligence activities according to the results achieved during the early months of the war. The committee members noted the following shortcomings in the activities of the Intelligence Directorate of the General Staff of the Red Army: the organizational structure of the directorate was not appropriate to wartime work conditions; there was a lack of due control over the directorate on the part of the General Staff of the Red Army; the material base of military intelligence was inadequate

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The Organization and Leadership of Partisan Detachments in Ukraine  •  29 (especially the lack of airplanes to drop reconnoiterers in the enemy’s rear); and the directorate lacked crucial departments of military and subversive intelligence. By an order issued by the Soviet defense minister on 16 February 1942, the Intelligence Directorate was renamed the Main Intelligence Directorate (GRU) of the General Staff of the Red Army, as a result of which it experienced major structural and personnel changes.52 Another reorganization of army intelligence took place on 23 October 1942, when the GRU was divided into the Main Intelligence Directorate (GRU NKO or GRU KA) and the Intelligence Directorate of the General Staff (RU GSh KA).53 GRU was no longer subordinated to the head of the General Staff but directly to People’s Commissar of Defence Joseph Stalin. The GRU KA was headed by Lieutenant-General Ivan Ilichev, and the Intelligence Directorate (RU) by Lieutenant-General Fedor Kuznetsov. All secret agents’ intelligence gathering, including in the enemy’s rear in the occupied Soviet territory and outside the borders, was entrusted to the GRU, while front-line intelligence, meaning military intelligence, was subordinated to the RU. By order of the State Defense Committee, the RU was forbidden to take part in intelligence gathering via secret agents. There are differing theories concerning the reasons behind these changes. According to one advanced by the then-head of the GRU, Divisional Commissar Ivan Ilichev, secret agents gathering intelligence at the fronts and in armies were poorly equipped technically, and their work was carried out by inadequately trained cadres; agent networks were infiltrated by “provocateurs” and did not fully acquit themselves of their task to inform the commands of fronts about the situation in the Germans’ operational rear: According to the GRU’s concept, in order to eliminate these troubles, it was necessary to forbid front-line and army intelligence organs to conduct secret intelligence gathering, and for the GRU forces to carry out, in a centralized fashion, all the work of selecting, training, [and] dispatching to the enemy’s rear reconnoiterers and agents and directing them, as well as the information of fronts by means of secret intelligence. A truly wise method of curing a headache by cutting off the head was outlined.54

According to other data, the separation of the GRU and the RU was caused by the fact that the head of the General Staff was overloaded with two different types of intelligence information: data supplied by secret agents and military intelligence. For that reason, in order to separate everything that did not pertain directly to the General Staff (in particular,

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30  •  Stalin’s Commandos data on the situation in the “far abroad”, e.g. in the USA) from information from the theater of military action, it was decided to disengage the RU from the GRU and subordinate the GRU directly to Stalin, who attached great importance to information arriving from the occupied territory, though data from abroad was always important as well. One way or another, the reorganization that began from the moment that the Rzhev and Stalingrad offensives were prepared led to feverish shifts in the Red Army’s intelligence organization. The new system could hardly be called optimal. First of all, starting in the fall of 1942, secret agents’ tasks were not directly assigned by the “users” of intelligence information (staffs of fronts) but in a centralized fashion—through the GRU. Direct control over agents was also maintained from Moscow. Second, staffs of fronts stopped receiving information promptly from secret agents in the enemy’s rear. Instead, data supplied by secret agents flowed to the GRU, where they were processed before being transmitted to the staffs of fronts and armies:55 Thus, it often happened that summaries of the situation in the enemy’s rear came to troops after they had already occupied the territory that was discussed in the transmitted reports. Furthermore, during the course of the hasty reorganization of intelligence gathering, hundreds of intelligence groups and resident stations were left without proper direction, and a certain proportion of them was put out of action altogether.56

In the spring of 1943 front commanders sent the Supreme Commander in Chief an urgent request to revoke the above-mentioned reorganization. By an order issued by the Soviet defense minister on 18 April 1943, control over military and secret intelligence gathering at the fronts was assigned to the Intelligence Directorate of the General Staff: 3) Abolish the 2nd Directorate within the Main Intelligence Directorate [GRU] of the Red Army, which is conducting secret agent intelligence gathering on the temporarily occupied territories of the USSR. Transfer the secret agent network, material means, and cadres of this directorate to the Intelligence Directorate [RU] of the General Staff of the Red Army; 4) The Main Intelligence Directorate of the Red Army is to conduct secret agent intelligence gathering only abroad.

According to some data, reconnaissance-subversive work in the occupied territory of the USSR was the responsibility of the directorate’s 2nd

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The Organization and Leadership of Partisan Detachments in Ukraine  •  31 Department (headed by Major-General Nikolai V. Sherstnev), while the deputy head of the 2nd Department, Colonel Kosivanov, was in charge of specific subversive actions. A special-purpose air squadron commanded by Major Tsutsaev, which was part of the Intelligence Directorate, was used for carrying out operations in the enemy’s rear.57 This situation lasted until the end of the war. After the war, the RU was merged once again with the GRU and subordinated to the General Staff of the Red Army (renamed the Soviet Army in 1946). For the partisans of the Red Army’s intelligence units, all the above reorganizations meant that, from the beginning of the war until 23 October 1942, they were subordinated to the RU (GRU) of the General Staff of the Red Army, at times directly to the Intelligence Directorate, and sometimes through front staffs—that is, to Filipp Golikov, Aleksei Panfilov, and Ivan Ilichev successively. After the separation of the GRU and the RU—from 23 October 1942 to 18 April 1943—these detachments were subordinated to the GRU, headed by Ilichev. From 18 April 1943 to the end of the war these formations were controlled by the RU of the Red Army’s General Staff headed by Fedor Kuznetsov, both directly from the Center and through the intelligence departments of front staffs. The commanders of groups operating in Ukraine during the war years included Anton Brynsky (Western Ukraine) and Kuzma Hnidash (on the left bank of the Dnipro River), both of whom were named Heroes of the Soviet Union. As far as the priorities of RU and GRU partisan detachments were concerned, various data indicate that their main concern was intelligence gathering, while terrorism was not a top priority. Army partisan groups also differed from the subordinate staffs of the partisan movement. Ilya Starinov, who served in the UShPD during the war, believes that the GRU viewed subversion as a secondary matter, preferring to count trains rather than derail them.58 *** Thus, three types of Soviet special subunits (known as commandos in English, Sondereinheiten in German and spetsnaz in Russian) operated in the Wehrmacht’s rear in Ukraine. Their missions were pretty much the same on the whole, but—and this is the key thing—their priorities were different: there were saboteurs (UShPD), terrorists (NKVD–NKGB), and intelligence agents (GRU–RU). At the same time, the secondary and tertiary missions of each of these agencies duplicated the top-priority tasks of the other two military and security structures that were engaged in the struggle in the rear. In sum, this situation generated definite competition among the various agencies, although cooperation on certain issues was occasionally noted.

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32  •  Stalin’s Commandos

The Interaction of Partisans in Various Agencies and the Control Exerted by the Leadership’s Rear Agencies Until mid-1942 the Soviet leadership of partisan formations lacked order and coordination of efforts. From the moment that the staffs of the partisan movement were created, the three above-mentioned organizations, operating independently of each other, were engaged in the rear-line struggle. On a regular basis, the leaders of the GRU–RU, the UShPD, and the 4th Directorate of the NKVD–NKGB USSR failed to provide information to one another about their respective activities, such as data on the creation, dropping, and stationing of detachments, their combat, intelligence, and subversive missions, plans, etc. In particular, on the UShPD’s operational maps some detected partisan detachments from other structures are not identified at all: question marks appear next to them.59 This lack of informedness led, in particular, to occasional unanticipated encounters between partisan detachments of various agencies. In an encounter that took place between the large Sumy unit and Medvedev’s Pobediteli Detachment, an exchange of fire took place, during which Ivan Lysytsyn, the chief of staff of the 2nd Infantry Battalion, was wounded.60 On the other hand, a number of cases demonstrate that all these ruling structures at times did exchange information and support each other out of operational necessity. Starting in 1943, cooperation was instituted at the organizational level. In keeping with an order issued by Stalin on 19 April 1943, members of the Intelligence Directorate of the General Staff of the Red Army were appointed as the deputy heads of intelligence departments of the republican and front-line staffs of the partisan movement (including the UShPD). In addition, Intelligence Directorate commanders were appointed to partisan detachments operating in districts that were of interest to the directorate, in the capacity of deputy commanders of partisan detachments and large units whose mission was to gather intelligence. This same order mandated that reconnaissance reports of partisan detachments had to be signed by both the commander and the commissar of a given detachment, as well as by the deputy commander of the intelligence-gathering detachment.61 In other words, all of the most important intelligence data obtained by detachments subordinated to the staffs of the partisan movement were supposed to be brought automatically to the attention of members of the Intelligence Directorate of the General Staff of the Red Army, who occasionally even possessed their own portable radio transmitters, which

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The Organization and Leadership of Partisan Detachments in Ukraine  •  33 were not subject to the control of commanders of large units or detach­ ments. As early as the spring of 1942 the large Sumy unit included an active special group in the intelligence department of the Briansk front staff, and it was headed by Vershyhora, who later became Kovpak’s deputy in charge of intelligence. In early 1943 State Security Captain Yakov Korotkov, who was temporarily assigned to that unit, reported the following to Strokach: “Vershyhora deals only with general military intelligence; moreover, he reports all data only to the intelligence department of the Briansk front, to Lieutenant Colonel Romanov, where he also sends all kinds of captured documents.”62 Individual army intelligence groups operated from the bases of large units, that is, in concert with them.63 Similar penetration of UShPD detachments by representatives of the 4th Directorate of the NKVD–NKGB USSR was also observed. One such group, which was already operating in Saburov’s unit in October 1942, sought to exploit that unit’s intelligence network. The Chekists’ independence provoked a sharp objection from Saburov, who sent a complaint to Strokach; along with Kliment Voroshilov and Panteleimon Ponomarenko, Strokach unanimously supported Saburov.64 It is clear that from this moment NKVD USSR groups within large units of the Ukrainian staff of the partisan movement were subordinated to the commanders of these units, thereby preserving their autonomy and ability to carry out tasks independently. On the other hand, the GRU–RU may have had their own representatives among the personnel of NKVD–NKGB groups. There are also documented cases of the transfer of some personnel from one department to another. For example, in March 1943 a group of 50 men was transferred from the Stalin Detachment of the UShPD, subsequently forming the nucleus of the Pokhod (“Campaign”) Detachment of the NKGB USSR.65 In another case, a Polish detachment, commanded by Józef Sobesiak, was transferred in December 1943 from a brigade of the Intelligence Directorate of the General Staff of the Red Army (RU GSh KA) commanded by Anton Brynsky to the large Rivne unit of the UShPD commanded by Vasyl Behma.66 On the rank-and-file level, cooperation among detachments depended on the particulars of a situation. If partisan commanders of various departments managed to establish normal relations with each other, then these efforts led to joint combat operations and an exchange of secret-agent networks. Occasionally, coordination of actions by various detachments took place at the command center level—of the UShPD, RU GSh KA, and the 4th Directorate of the NKGB USSR—which issued orders to detachments concerning redeployment and operational cooperation.

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34  •  Stalin’s Commandos The leading centers’ control over detachments that were operating in the rear of the Wehrmacht will be described here. Only documents that were generated by the partisans under the Ukrainian Staff of the Partisan Movement are accessible to the requisite degree; thus, it is possible to dwell in greater detail on the forces that were subordinated to Strokach. In 1941–42 control over all types of partisan formations was extremely weak. Recalling the situation in August 1941, Dmitrii Medvedev declared: “Until that time no one knew what was happening in the fascists’ rear.”67 In the second half of 1942 the UShPD was located many hundreds of kilometers away from the zone of operations of its subordinated partisans, and air links were also irregular. In late 1942, once the partisan leadership system had acquired a semblance of structure, the UShPD had moved to Moscow, and the majority of large Ukrainian units had received their radio transmitters, the Center’s control over the partisans was finally effective. The following were the main forms of verification: As far as possible, commanders of large units and detachments were supposed to report to the UShPD about the most important events related to their personal activities in the form of brief radiograms; the commands of large units regularly sent the UShPD extensive operational reports on any kind of significant operations—raids, for example—as well as ordinary reports covering a specific period of time; in the majority of large units and independent brigades and detachments, the deputy commanders or commanders’ aides responsible for intelligence were Strokach’s personal informants; the majority of radio operators who were dispatched to work in large partisan units were Strokach’s secret agents, and unbeknownst to detachments’ command personnel, they sent him reports on the situation in large partisan units; wounded partisans were regularly delivered on UShPD airplanes to the Soviet rear, and they also served as additional sources of information on events transpiring on the occupied territory; from time to time individual commanders and commissars of partisan formations were summoned to the “Soviet mainland” for talks with leaders on various levels (in early September 1942 partisan commanders Saburov and Kovpak even attended a conference at the Kremlin, where Stalin was present); on a regular basis or depending on the situation, the leaders of oblast-based staffs of the partisan movement reported to the UShPD about the situation in partisan formations; the representatives of the Ukrainian Staff of the Partisan Movement and the CC CP(B)U, including Strokach and the secretary of the CC CP(B)U, Demian Korotchenko, periodically traveled to the occupied territory for meetings with representatives of partisan detachments, and some of them (for example, Ivan Syromolotny) were posted to active detachments for many months; and, finally, during partisan formations’

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The Organization and Leadership of Partisan Detachments in Ukraine  •  35 short- or long-term periods of proximity to each other, their commanders sent information about the neighboring detachments and large units to the UShPD or its representative offices. During the war years the Soviet system wielded control over the partisans who were accountable to the UShPD but not connected directly with a given organization. Data on the situation in occupied Soviet territory, including on the actions of UShPD partisans, were reported to the leadership by the following: partisans accountable to other staffs of the partisan movement (the Belarusian, in particular); partisans, groups, and secret agents of detachments subordinated to the NKVD–NKGB USSR (including groups found within UShPD detachments); partisans, groups, and secret agents of the GRU and RU (including representatives of the RU in large UShPD units); secret agents and groups of the NKVD, and from April 1943 the NKGB of the Ukrainian SSR and Belarusian SSR; underground oblast committees of the CP(B)U and other party organizations; Red Army troops, in those cases where partisans ended up in direct proximity to the front or were crossing it; and journalists, writers, and other cultural workers, who, in certain cases, spent several months in partisan detachments. The superiors of these informants could forward the collected data to the head of the UShPD or send a report to one of their immediate chiefs— Stalin, Khrushchev, or Ponomarenko. John Armstrong’s assertion that “the control system superimposed on the partisan bands did indeed succeed in maintaining an extremely high degree of overt loyalty to the regime”68 is not entirely accurate. Still in place in 1941–42, the command nuclei of partisan formations, and hence of detachments, were loyal to the Soviet authorities on the whole; indeed, they were part and parcel of the regime. The crux of the system of control, however, lay in something else: it was multilevel, which enabled the powers that be to monitor adequately the situation in detachments and the activities of partisan commanders and rank-and-file commandos. Assessing the structure of the leadership of partisan detachments leads one to conclude that on the whole it was ineffective in 1941–42, but beginning in April 1943 and through to the very end of the war it was generally equal to the tasks that were assigned to Soviet fighters by the leader of the USSR.

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2 A Brief Overview of the History of Soviet Partisan Warfare in Ukraine The First Year: Devastating Between us, I must tell you frankly that unless the British create a Second Front in Europe within the next three or four weeks, we and our allies may lose the war. This is sad, but it could become a fact. Chairman of the Council of People’s Commissars of the USSR Joseph Stalin to Soviet Ambassador to England Ivan Maysky, end of August 19411

In the first year of the Soviet–German war the Germans were confronted with a set of complex circumstances. The Wehrmacht had limited experience with anti-partisan operations, plans for combat actions were not being implemented, and there were insufficient forces at the front. In fact, there was no continuous front line in Ukraine until the spring of 1942. Moreover, the Nazis had a weak notion of the territory and population over which they were expected to gain control. In late 1943 partisan commander Mikhail Naumov reminisced nostalgically: The winter of 1941–42 was very auspicious … At the time we had space and deep Russian snows … This made broad maneuvers possible … In the deep snows … German technology was impotent … In the forests we, partisans, found an abundance of ammunition and various weapons … even regimental mortars and ordnance … cadre fighters and commanders of the R[ed] Ar[my] from neighboring areas, marvelously trained in the military arts, joined the ranks of the partisans.2

Nevertheless, the Ukrainian red partisans experienced a number of defeats. On 6 March 1942 People’s Commissar of Internal Affairs of the Ukrainian SSR Vasyl Serhiienko sent a memorandum to the secretary of the CC CP(B)U, Demian Korotchenko, noting that between August 1941 and 1 March 1942 the NKVD of the Ukrainian SSR had formed

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A Brief Overview of the History of Soviet Partisan Warfare in Ukraine  •  37 1,874 partisan detachments, totaling 30,000 men.3 Meanwhile, a memorandum issued by the staff of the destruction battalions of the NKVD USSR reported that, as of 1 May 1942, 37 partisan detachments, numbering 1,918 men, were operating in Ukraine and communicating with the “Soviet mainland.”4 To the present day no historian has given a comprehensive answer to the question of what happened to nearly all the Soviet Ukrainian partisans in 1941 and 1942. An employee of Russia’s FSB, Alexei Popov, only reached this authoritative conclusion: “The hastily created partisan formations burned with the desire to smash the enemy…”5 A report prepared by the Nazi security service, Sicherheitsdienst (SD), offers a detailed picture of the events that transpired in Ukraine in the summer of 1941. In all likelihood, this document discusses mostly army groups: From the aerodrome near Kyiv every day up to 50 parachutists are dispatched to Galicia, the Lutsk district, but also all the way to Warsaw … Communist émigrés from all countries, [former] fighters in Spain, former Polish officers, but also serving Russian officers dressed in civilian clothing with passports made out in false names are used [dispatched to the German rear] … The majority [of the saboteurs] were called up for the first time through communist organizations shortly after the war began, and after one trial jump from a height of 40 meters, then they jump from a height of 2,000 meters. Shootings take place in the plane because of the refusal to jump … After landing, parachutists often voluntarily surrender to the German organs.6

According to the memoirs of GRU employee Vitalii Nikolsky, which were published by his daughter, “the training of people and their redeployment to the enemy’s rear were carried out in such massive numbers that they reminded one of a kind of conveyor.”7 The actions of the party organizations to build partisan groups were a similar kind of “conveyor”, that had little to do with quality, for example in Right-Bank Ukraine, in the forested Zhytomyr region. According to the plenipotentiary representative of the CC CP(B)U, Stepan Malikov, those who were reserved “for work” were mostly rank-and-file communists untrained for carrying out sabotage activity, as very few leading party and Soviet workers remained: Those who were kept behind were not trained, secret addresses [and] passwords were not established, etc. Partisan bases were practically not used in a single district, and the people left behind surrendered these

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38  •  Stalin’s Commandos bases to the German authorities, and a significant number of policemen and turncoats were armed thanks to this weaponry … By December 1942 there was not a single local partisan detachment in Zhytomyr oblast … A number of communists have gone over to the fascist camp and are actively assisting the German authorities.8

An SD report dated 11 September 1941 contains information about similar conduct on the part of members of NKVD destruction battalions in central Ukraine: According to the information of captured partisans, a lack of bellicosity was already evident before the active execution of a mission, inasmuch as the training of [future partisans] took place after the completion of work, and no attention was paid to the physical suitability of some [future partisans]. With the approach of the German armies and the increasing intensity of German bomber pilot raids, in many places there began to be noted manifestations of panic and signs of the disbandment [of detachments], which only increased after the escape of many chiefs. Thus, for example … in Yelysavethrad [modern-day Kirovohrad], 4 days after the start of carrying out the assignment, only 28 partisans remained in a company that had numbered 140 men. Men on point duty under arms had gone who knows where.9

In September 1941 the situation in southern Ukraine was suggestive of events that were taking place in central Ukraine: “It seems that the spread of the partisan war was prevented by the fleeing of higher partisan leaders, and by the fact that, owing to the years-long cultivation of dependence and expectation of orders, the initiative of individual members has been largely extinguished.”10 The facts contained in the above-cited SD reports are thrown into greater relief in Soviet documents. Even in north-eastern Ukraine, in those regions that had become the “small fatherlands” of Ukrainian partisan formations, thanks to the availability of forests and distance from the Soviet–German border, the Soviet party and state apparatus committed numerous errors. The diary kept by the apparatchik and partisan commander Mykola Popudrenko contains an entry about the German bombardment of Chernihiv on 23 August 1941, which threw the Chekists into a panic: “After the first bomb the militia and the NKVD abandoned their building, much weaponry, and ammunition. I had a lot of difficulties compelling them to evacuate the burning magazines and depots.”11 Popudrenko observed a similar situation in the raion center of Mena.

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A Brief Overview of the History of Soviet Partisan Warfare in Ukraine  •  39 The partisan commanders Kovpak and Rudnev reported on the situation in Sumy oblast to the CC CP(B)U: “The clandestine [Putyvel] raion party committee chickened out and fled.”12 Later, Kovpak described a similar incident in a report to the UShPD. On 7 September 1941 a group of Belarusian saboteurs arrived in Putyvel from the Kharkiv NKVD school, requesting assistance to cross over into the Germans’ rear to carry out sabotage actions: “In essence, this work should have been done by NKVD employees, but they did everything in order to dump these people on my shoulders and calmly evacuate deep into the heart of the country.”13 The Germans did not fail to exploit the fact that Soviet commandos were surrendering en masse or generally going over to their side. Some NKVD secret-agent schemes were successfully neutralized. One of many examples follows: Glukhov, b. 1894, a Russian, member of the AUCP(B) [All-Union Communist Party (of the Bolsheviks)] since 1930, naval captain, 3rd class, reserves, a prosecutor of political cases from 1931 to 1937 … appointed commander of united partisan detachments formed in the city of Kyiv … Glukhov appeared at the commandant’s office in the c[ity] of Yahotyn and handed over his partisan detachment of more than 50 men and an ammunition base of 300,000 cartridges. Having been recruited by German intelligence, Glukhov exposed and betrayed three partisan detachments numbering 50 men in Poltava and Kharkiv oblasts. Then, in keeping with his intelligence mission, Glukhov, together with two Gestapo agents who were attached to him, formed a false-flag partisan detachment with which he arrived in our rear, supposedly for some respite and to reinforce the detachment … Glukhov was arrested.14

A small number of detachments, whose commanders still wanted to fight the enemy, were destroyed. An analytical report prepared by one of the German divisions protecting the rear recounts its operations against saboteurs who had been dropped into the Germans’ rear, in the territories of Zhytomyr, Kamianets-Podilsky (modern-day Khmelnytsky), Rivne, and Ternopil oblasts. In the space of two days in August 1941 between 120 and 150 paratroopers were discovered, of which 50 were taken prisoner in those two days, and 17 were killed.15 These paratroopers often fired their weapons down to the very last cartridge. Units that had been sent into the Germans’ rear on foot were also destroyed. For example, on 6 August 1941 the 100-strong battalion of the

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40  •  Stalin’s Commandos 1st Ukrainian Partisan Regiment of the NKVD was destroyed by a group of 50 German machine gunners. According to Savchenko, deputy head of the NKVD of the Ukrainian SSR, the reasons … behind the failure of the 1st Battalion were: the place of rest occupied by the battalion, which was disadvantageous in tactical terms; the lack of proper reconnaissance; the poor organization of protection, as a result of which the Germans approached the battalion undetected to within a distance of 50 meters; and, finally, the possible treachery of 2 partisans, form[er] militia workers in the city of Kyiv.16

The Germans’ description of the destruction of the 1st Regiment confirms that the unit’s main forces were located thanks to statements given by prisoners.17 An incident that took place in central Ukraine demonstrates the quality of the saboteurs’ training: According to information dated 26 October 1941, partisans turned up at the home of the village elder in the village of Pishchane, Reshetylivka raion [Poltava oblast] and demanded bread and fatback from him. The village elder did not satisfy the partisans’ request and reported them to the commandant. A punitive detachment arriving in the village arrested 12 partisans.18

The combat diary of the 213th Security Division also noted the tactical success of collective punishment against “bandit accomplices”: In the month of January [1942] the mopping up of Partisans in the Novomoskovsk-Pavlograd area … was continued … In the vast forests … a partisan group consisting of several hundreds of men had … committed several acts of sabotage in the surrounding country. Drastic reprisals against the dependents of the band members produced particularly good results in the fight against the partisans.19

A general picture of the rout was outlined circumspectly in a report about the activities of the Ukrainian partisans, which was drafted by Colonel Vladimir Bondarev, the head of the operational department of the UShPD: Owing to the lack of technical means of communication with the Soviet rear (communication was carried out by messengers crossing

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A Brief Overview of the History of Soviet Partisan Warfare in Ukraine  •  41 the front line on foot), the arrival of difficult cold-weather conditions, the depletion of supplies of ammunition and food, inadequate experience, and sometimes even lack of faith in our forces, the partial crossing of unstable elements to the enemy’s side, and the treachery of detachments, a significant proportion of the detachments [in 1941 and 1942] was smashed or fell apart.20

The same thing was noted in a report prepared by the SD: “Generally speaking, this organized partisan movement, which has been proclaimed and propagandized by the Russian government, has not attained the anticipated scale; and the reason for this should be sought not in poor training but in the absence of interest on the part of the population.”21 Here, one should also add the lack of interest on the part of the detachment personnel and their commanders. A tiny number of partisans continued to fight; in Ukraine, only two oblasts were in some measure under partisan influence: Chernihiv and Sumy; that is, the north-eastern part of the country. Even the representatives of the German punitive units noted the episodic nature of partisan activity, despite usually tending to exaggerate an exposed threat in order to demonstrate their own importance. For example, a memorandum written by a police functionary to the head of the SS, Heinrich Himmler, about the situation in Reichskommissariat Ukraine as of 4 March 1942, noted: “The Bolshevik terrorists have switched to attack in the most varied places. They are not only robbing and ravaging Ukrainian villages but also, thanks to their good arming, attacking small supply columns of the Wehrmacht. The situation in the northern regions of the R[eichs]k[ommissariat] U[kraine] is particularly difficult.”22 Belarus is being referred to here. In general, during the first year of the war reports about the controlled rear were dispatched from Ukraine to Berlin. There are many reasons for the defeats that were inflicted on the partisans. Those that were typical of the entire USSR and those that related specifically to Ukraine will both be explained. In Ukraine the circumstances surrounding the annihilation of the forces of the two Soviet fronts, the South-western and Southern, in the summer and fall of 1941 revealed one of the key features of the Soviet system: a weak capacity for improvisation, which was manifested, in particular, in the extremely weak organization of detachments. In a directive dated 27 July 1941 Vsevolod Merkulov, Deputy People’s Commissar of Internal Affairs, noted that formations were being created hastily—literally in a few hours—out of people who were strangers to one another and did not know how to use weapons, especially grenades and

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42  •  Stalin’s Commandos explosive materials: “Guides from among local residents are not being provided for detachments and groups, maps and compasses are not being issued … Detachments and groups are being instructed briefly, as a result of which they do have a clear notion of what and how they should act.”23 A month later, on 21 August 1941, the NKVD resident in Ukraine’s capital characterized the situation on the ground in a letter to Pavel Sudoplatov: Confusion, lack of leadership, the circumstance whereby no one bears responsibility for these detachments, a lack of understanding of how they will work … Rashness in the definition of tasks [assigned] to detachments in their organization … On 8–9 August a partisan detachment of 100–150 men created in Kharkiv was transferred to the sector of the 87th Division. Its mission was to go into Belarus. The transfer place was near Kyiv. No maps, no guide … They were dressed in city clothing, leather coats … The inability to command detachments in local areas, the inability even to make contact with them … They learn about the detachments’ activities and routes only when remnants of them trickle back to us (which nearly all groups and detachments do) … The partisans’ lack of skill at crossing the front … From day to day the apparatus [the NKVD of the Ukrainian SSR] does not know the situation in sectors of the front and the enemy’s relocation. For that reason, the transfer place is selected by intuition, not according to the situation … Grosman’s detachment was thrown … onto the Germans’ mortars (an ambush). Some were killed, some returned after spending 5 days in mud … The partisans are being armed miserably … The incorrect use of partisans.24

Ilya Starinov declared that “untrained formations were thrown into the enemy rear,”25 a statement corroborated by a memorandum drafted by the NKVD of the Ukrainian SSR on 5 October 1941: “Detachments do military training locally; in particular, a special school has been organized in Kharkiv oblast … where 67 command personnel individuals and 1,551 rank-and-file partisans have gone through educational training of 5 days [Starinov’s emphasis].”26 The job of organizing detachments was largely entrusted to the pusillanimous27 party nomenklatura. In the summer of 1941 Stalin expressed his dissatisfaction with its conduct in a resolution approved by the CC AUCP(B): “There are frequent cases where the leaders of party and Soviet organizations in raions, having been exposed to the threat of capture by the German fascists, shamefully abandon their combat posts, depart to the deep rear, to quiet locations, turning in fact into deserters.”28 A year and

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A Brief Overview of the History of Soviet Partisan Warfare in Ukraine  •  43 a half later Ponomarenko reported to Stalin on the same phenomenon: “In 1941, 23 oblast committees of the CP(B)U, 63 municipal committees, and 564 raion committees of the CP(B)U were left in the underground on the territory of Ukraine. However, communication with the majority of the underground organizations was lost.”29 Together with the leading party and Soviet figures, representatives of the Red Army and the NKVD were at the forefront of the partisan struggle—a situation that caused a lack of coordination, as noted in a memorandum drafted on 6 March 1942 by Serhiienko, People’s Commissar of Internal Affairs of the Ukrainian SSR: “From all the indicated organizations there is a large concentration on the front line of diverse representatives who are working at cross-purposes and hindering each other.”30 While army commanders sharply criticized party members and the Chekists,31 Serhiienko believed, on the contrary, that the army was more responsible for the failures than the party,32 and that the Chekists did not have an indefinite supply of material at their disposal: “The NKVD of the Ukrainian SSR urgently needs at least two airplanes.”33 The lack of coordination marking the activities of various agencies is mentioned in the memoirs of the saboteur Ilya Starinov: “It also happened like this: some implanted secret agents in the enemy’s rear, while others, unaware of this, destroyed them.”34 The red partisans’ rout in Ukraine was also characterized by certain features. During the first year of the war the SD’s reports from occupied Belarus and Russia differed from the SD’s reports from Ukraine. In the first case, the reports discussed the partisans’ struggle against the occupier, while the reports from Ukraine described for the most part the destruction of partisans and the extermination of party functionaries and NKVD personnel.35 According to the reports of the NKVD USSR, dated February 1942, during the first period of the war the average Soviet Ukrainian partisan was operating four times less effectively than his “average statistical” Russian colleague.36 Moreover, as of 1 May 1942, the number of partisans throughout the territory of Ukraine who were in contact with the Center was 11 times smaller than the number of partisans based in Russia’s Orel oblast alone.37 Ukrainians were less loyal to the Soviet regime than the Russians and Belarusians. Even in Ukraine’s central and eastern oblasts, the level of loyalty to the communists was lower than in the RSFSR and Belarusian SSR. The difference between the mentalities of the Ukrainians and Russians from central Russia may be explained by the fact that, by the nineteenth century, the village commune (obshchina) in Ukraine, as opposed to central Russia, was no longer the main form of peasant land ownership and land

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44  •  Stalin’s Commandos use. The Leninist agricultural commune and Stalinist collective farm were perverted forms of the reincarnated village commune. Therefore, it was much more painful for the individualistically inclined Ukrainian peasants to accept collectivization than it was for the peasants from central Russia. The Ukrainians had also kept their national memory alive, which served to encourage their aspirations to independence; this fact was duly noted by German army propagandists: “In keeping with his quick temperament, the Ukrainian has a much more lively spirit than the Belarusians. The Ukrainian can look back at a rich historical past: Kyivan Rus′, the Galician Kingdom, the Cossack state. The church always played a key role in national life … [His] intellectual life is very active.”38 The years of collectivization had gravely affected Ukraine.39 In 1931–32 intensified state grain deliveries were instituted in the republic, which led to the great famine known as the “Holodomor” (“murder by starvation”). The starvation of millions forced the Ukrainian peasants to their knees, but the Soviet government never succeeded in obtaining their absolute loyalty. This tendency is also occasionally discerned in Soviet documents. On 5 May 1942 Sydir Kovpak wrote to Nikita Khrushchev about facts that were troubling to the Soviet government: After the departure of the Red Army, the population of [Putyvel] raion [in Sumy oblast] was crushed by the events that had taken place and by the terror of the German armies, and some strata of the population and a number of Ukrainian villages had been elated by the arrival of the occupying troops; they were hostilely disposed toward the partisans and the Soviet power.40

Moreover, the majority of Ukraine’s territory, in contrast to Russia and Belarus, consists of steppes and forest steppes, where throughout 1941 and 1942 the Soviets persistently sought to organize a partisan struggle. According to NKVD data, until the fall of 1941, 7,500 people had been dispatched for partisan warfare to a number of oblasts located in central and southern Ukraine.41 But by 1 March 1943 there was not a single partisan in contact with the UShPD in these four oblasts.42 The activities of the Soviet commandos were also complicated by the fact that Ukraine was comparatively well developed economically, with a relatively dense network of roads. The Germans used these communication links actively in the summer and fall campaigns of 1942, during the course of which the situation of the Ukrainian partisans changed significantly.

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A Brief Overview of the History of Soviet Partisan Warfare in Ukraine  •  45

The Second Year: Critical We no longer dominate the Germans in terms of either human reserves or in reserves of bread. To retreat further is to doom oneself … From Order No. 227, dated 28 July 1942, issued by USSR People’s Commissar of Defence Joseph Stalin

The Soviet offensive that took place in Eastern Ukraine in the spring and summer of 1942 ended in failure. As a result, on 17 July 1942 the Germans captured Voroshylovhrad (modern-day Luhansk), and the counteroffensive continued in the direction of the Volga River and the Caucasus. The events of 1941 were repeated with uncommon similarity in Eastern Ukraine. A report drawn up by the UShPD’s operational department noted that in June–July 1942, 216 detachments and six radio stations were formed in three eastern oblasts of the Ukrainian SSR, and were left in place when the Red Army retreated.43 Six months later, when the Red Army reoccupied these territories, this number was reduced to 12 detachments (5 per cent of the original number) totaling 241 men.44 Nearly all the detachments that were left in place in the Kharkiv and Donbas regions in the summer of 1942 were disbanded within the space of one or two months,45 owing to the recurring problem of shoddy training, lack of initiative, retreat to the Soviet rear, and desertion to the Germans. German documents endorsed the fact that the population was supporting their side.46 At the same time, prospective partisans continued to be parachuted deep into the rear of the Wehrmacht, and between August and December 1942 the UShPD alone parachuted in 292 men.47 Groups and fighters were dispatched either to the bases of already functioning detachments or to new districts. In the latter case, most of them were captured and killed by Germans and policemen.48 During their interrogation, the members of one group of parachutists captured in the vicinity of the city of Slavuta (Kamianets-Podilsky oblast, modern-day Khmelnytsky), who were probably subordinated to the GRU, confessed that in the General Staff of the Red Army they had been told about an offensive that was being planned in the vicinity of Rzhev (Russia). On 21 November Himmler sent this information to Hitler.49 It should be noted here that the Soviet offensive near Rzhev, which commenced on 25 November 1942, collapsed into a number of fruitless frontal attacks. After a year and a half of parachuting partisans into the bare steppes, the organizers (UShPD) finally grasped the pointlessness of these actions:

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46  •  Stalin’s Commandos The experience of late 1942 showed that dropping groups into Ukraine’s southern districts, in places where there were no detachments directly connected with staffs, with the mission of exposing and organizing partisan detachments, was not warranted, as the preponderant majority of them, despite the presence of radio stations in a group, did not communicate, and their fate remains unknown for the time being.50

From mid-1942, partisan detachments that had been fighting since 1941 and had managed to acquire some experience had cause to be uneasy about the occupation administration in the north-eastern part of the Ukrainian SSR. In May–July 1942 a detachment commanded by Kovpak carried out a raid from Russia into Ukraine’s Sumy oblast. It fought a number of successful battles against the police and Hungarian and German units, but by mid-June 1942 the Germans managed to concentrate significant forces against the partisans, and the detachment was surrounded. Subsequent events are described in a German document entitled “Operation ‘Putivl’ against Kovpak’s Partisan Group in the Period of 20.6–23.6.42”: “Result: Although the partisan group succeeded, by means of nocturnal battles, in breaking through the Hungarians’ line of defense, they returned to the Briansk forests, taking with them the wounded and sacks and packs loaded onto approximately 100 carts.”51 In his operational report, Kovpak explained the reasons behind the failed raid: “The personnel’s fatigue, a large number of wounded, lack of ammunition and explosives, intensified pressure of the enemy’s superior forces—all this together demanded an exit from the situation that had come about.”52 Back to the Briansk forests in Russia. In July–August 1942, Fedorov’s unit left Belarus for Chernihiv oblast, but it too failed to consolidate its grip on Ukraine. It subsequently departed to Russia’s Orel oblast. According to the German occupation administration, the dragnet operations that were carried out in the northern part of Sumy oblast in the summer of 1942 “gave rise to panic among the partisans. In various villages … individual partisans with arms are registering with the police […] They have a radio receiver, and they are greatly impressed by the successes of German troops near Kerch, Kharkiv, and Voronezh.”53 Encouraged by the successes at the front, on 18 August 1942 Hitler issued Order No. 46, commanding the SS to suppress any and all partisan activities in the rear of the German armies on the Eastern Front by the onset of winter.54 Mikhail Naumov, the commander of a large cavalry unit, remembers this as a difficult period: “At that time battles were taking place near Stalingrad.

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A Brief Overview of the History of Soviet Partisan Warfare in Ukraine  •  47 No one was joining the partisans … It was necessary to use compulsory mobilization to the partisans’ ranks, with threats to shoot.”55 It is revealing that during the three-month period of the most intense battles for the Caucasus and the Volga, which took place between August and October, the number of partisans who were in contact with the UShPD rose by only 4 per cent (from 4,925 to 5,127).56 The main large units of the UShPD spent a significant part of their time in Russian and Belarusian territories bordering Ukraine—for which they were criticized not only by their command centers, but also by their own colleagues, some of whom were Russians.57 According to the head of the operations department of the UShPD, Colonel Vladimir Bondarev, during the second half of 1942 the “main shortcoming” in the activities of partisan detachments was that they were not engaged in active combat actions in any systematic fashion: “They did not undertake large-scale operations to demolish railway junctions [and] industrial enterprises that had been reopened by the Germans.”58 Also explaining the crisis afflicting partisan formations in the Ukrainian SSR was the fact that the entire territory of the republic turned out to be far from the front line, and thus radio communications with many detachments were periodically disrupted. One-third of the aircraft (30 out of 92) earmarked for transporting supplies to the Ukrainian partisans in June–December 1942 were destroyed.59 As for the situation on the fronts, the formation of the very [Ukrainian] staffs and its staffing with officers … took place literally on the move [covering thousands of kilometers— A.G.]. Between 7 and 18 July the staffs completed the redeployment from Voroshylovhrad to Kalach-Voronezhsky, and later to Stalingrad; on 12 August [the UShPD] moved to Sredniaia Akhtuba, on 1 September to Saratov, and on 12 October to Moscow, where systematic work began.60

In further developments during the second half of 1942, the southern section of the Soviet–German front became the primary one. Thus, a number of measures were adopted in order to secure communication there. In particular, the Germans set up strong police garrisons along the borders adjoining Belarus.61 An SD bulletin dated 30 October 1942 noted the definite success of these measures: “In the sphere of the command of the security police and the SD ‘Ukraine,’ gang activity has somewhat weakened as a result of the intensified use of police forces and the onset of bad weather.”62 During this period, there were no partisan detachments communicating with the staffs of the partisan movement in the highly forested western regions of Ukraine, in contrast to Western Belarus.

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48  •  Stalin’s Commandos Stalin believed that Eastern Ukraine would soon be occupied by the Red Army, and therefore decided to redeploy a number of partisan units to the right bank of the Dnipro River and the Volyn region. Since Kovpak and Saburov discussed the details of the operation personally with the Soviet leader, the raid was named after Stalin. Its participants were the large Sumy (832 men) and United (1,408 men) units. A number of smaller detachments were also dispatched from Russia to the left bank of the Dnipro. The two large units departed on 26 October, marching parallel to each other. The partisans marched from Orel (RSFSR) to the Sumy and Chernihiv oblasts, covering on average 25 km a day. As early as 2 November 1943, Leonid Ivanov, the commander of one of the detachments of Saburov’s unit, recorded the following entry in his diary: “We are walking freely on our land, the police are running away in fright.”63 After smashing police garrisons in a number of raion centers in Chernihiv and Gomel oblasts, on 8 November both units forced a crossing of the Dnipro. Using a portable radio transmitter, Strokach informed Saburov: “The supreme command is following your actions with great attention, we are very pleased with the successes … Please report about the results of the march on a daily basis.”64 Shortly afterwards, the Sumy unit attacked the raion center of Lelchitsy (at the time Polesia oblast, Belarusian SSR). The Germans described the crushing rout of this small city: A combat group numbering between 1,000 and 1,200 people armed with three mortars, one anti-tank weapon, and numerous machine guns and submachine guns attacked the Gebiet city of Lelchitsy on the morning of 26.11 at around 1 [a.m.?]. Besides guard detachments [comprising Soviet citizens, in this case: Ukrainians and Belarusians—A.G.], Lelchitsy was defended by a company of Latvians and a German engineering platoon. Despite this, Lelchitsy fell within a brief space of time … Everything German or [everything] that was helping the Germans was burned; also, many officials of the Gebietskommissar perished.65

For the first time in the war, two large Soviet partisan units had fought battles over a one-month period, during which they had crossed the territory of six oblasts, covering 800 km, forced a crossing of a large body of water, and expanded their ranks to 1,580 men66—that is, a 70 per cent increase. The raid’s unexpected success revealed the weakness of the German rear in Ukraine, as it started a process of destabilization. The German security services raised the alarm:

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A Brief Overview of the History of Soviet Partisan Warfare in Ukraine  •  49 Northern Ukraine may be defined as one that is at risk from gangs. Southern Ukraine may be defined as pacified. The approximate border is the Rivne–Kyiv highway … A worsening of the situation owing to the arrival of new combat-worthy strong gangs well equipped with heavy weapons … The incursion of a strong bandit group of “Kolpakoff ” in November caused a particular disturbance. Owing to the weakness of forces, it was only possible to stop the further advance southward of these strong gangs by the end of the month.67

According to the UShPD’s data, the state of its forces as of early 1943 was characterized by the following figures: “There are 60 active detachments numbering 9,199 men; of them [the enemy] has driven 24 detachments numbering 5,533 men from the territory of Ukraine … Thus, at the present time in Ukraine there is scarcely a single large, active detachment in communication with the center.”68 However, even outside Ukraine’s borders Ukrainian partisans were not sitting idle. For example, Saburov’s unit in Belarus carried out an operation similar to the one that Kovpak organized in Lelchitsy. A telegram sent from the Reichskommissariat Ukraine to Berlin stated: During the night of 15–16 January 1943 the city of Stolyn was subject to an attack by a strong gang. The residence of the Gebietskommissar [Mankevichi Palace] and the barracks of the guard detachments [consisting of Soviet citizens—A.G.] were looted and set on fire. Until morning the Gebietskommissar and eight colleagues were able to defend themselves from the bandits on the palace tower … After the bandits’ retreat he managed to crawl out of the burning tower along the roof to the ground … A distillery located near the palace was also looted and set on fire. The telephone station was destroyed. Two serving gendarmes were killed, [the partisans] dragged away approximately 100 members of the guard detachments, of which only 50 returned.69

The Stalin raid coincided with the Red Army’s Stalingrad offensive, after which the Germans lost the war for the hearts and minds of the population. Koch, the head of the Reichskommissariat Ukraine, wrote about this to Berlin: During the period when, prior to the beginning of the breach of the front throughout Ukraine—in addition to the northern forested regions [i.e. south Belarus—A.G.]—calm held sway in the plains region, there was no threat to the work of German plenipotentiaries responsible for agriculture;

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50  •  Stalin’s Commandos as of January 1943 the picture changed completely. The most difficult situation is in the newly recaptured regions east of the Dnipro.70

The Soviet side noted a similar turning-point. During the second half of 1942, 28 organizing groups were dispatched to Right-Bank Ukraine. By late 1942 Stepan Malikov formed a large unit in Zhytomyr oblast from the nucleus of one of these groups. He noted the mood of the population as one of the reasons for the success: “The people of the Zhytomyr region violently hate the German occupiers. The population of the majority of villages is fleeing from the German soldier as though from a beast.”71 At this time a large unit commanded by Hero of the Soviet Union Aleksandr Saburov, which was well known for its high level of subversive activity, was already operating in Zhytomyr oblast. Ivan Syromolotny, a representative of the CC CP(B)U, sent a letter to Strokach about Saburov’s men, declaring: “In terms of composition, his detachment is similar to a gang. People are running away to the woods from his detachment as though from the Germans. There is no limit to marauding.”72 However, despite these excesses, by the beginning of 1943 the majority of the Ukrainian population began to regard the partisans first and foremost as representatives of the winning side and, second, as a force that was helping the Red Army expel the occupiers, who, within the space of a year and a half of looting, contempt and terror, had become thoroughly hated. Meanwhile, in keeping with the UShPD’s mission, the partisans were expanding their zone of operational activities. This was a source of worry for German economists: “The gangs’ outrages are spreading from the Belarusian border ever farther southward.”73 This cited report from Nazi administration contains data indicating that in the space of a single month (probably March) only 55 per cent of the anticipated quantity of meat (3,460 tons instead of 6,280 tons) was collected in the four general commissariats in the northern part of Reichskommissariat Ukraine. In late January 1943 a raid into the southern forest-steppe districts of Sumy oblast (north-eastern Ukraine) was launched in accordance with a joint decision of the CC CP(B)U and the UShPD. A unified cavalry detachment, numbering 650 fighters led by the former border guard Mikhail Naumov, was hastily created for this mission. The raid began on the night of 1 February 1943, and within two weeks its goals had been achieved: a number of objectives located in the Germans’ rear in the Sumy region were destroyed, and at Vorozhba Station the partisans liberated a group of prisoners. Strokach therefore agreed with Naumov’s proposal to continue the operation and bring the detachment to the southern steppe districts of Ukraine.

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A Brief Overview of the History of Soviet Partisan Warfare in Ukraine  •  51 However, the second stage of the campaign was not as successful. Individual detachments arbitrarily broke away from the large unit, their commanders refusing to go deeper into the steppes. On 26 February a large cavalry unit crossed the ice-covered Dnipro, but it was unable to locate the detachments of the Kirovohrad partisans and obtain the air assistance that had been promised by the UShPD. On 3 March Naumov was awarded the title of Hero of the Soviet Union, and it was around this time that the situation of the unit began to worsen. Wolf’s Lair, Hitler’s Eastern Front military headquarters, was situated nearby, and the Germans made all efforts to destroy the unit. Despite the fact that two other large partisan groups had broken away from Naumov’s fighting force, throughout March the large unit fought its way northwards. This daring operation made an impression on the representatives of both the military74 and the civilian occupation administration. Even the head of Reichskommissariat Ukraine reported on the raid to the Eastern Ministry in Berlin: Naumov’s men had seized 1,500 horses, nearly 300 head of horned cattle, more than 600 sleds and carts, and other types of property. Koch believed that this was the work of a Red Army combat unit: Individual remnants of these military units remain everywhere. Above all, there is still anxiety among the population, which had worked obediently for a year and a half under German supervision and could never believe in the Bolsheviks’ return […] The population’s passive resistance has escalated significantly … Gang activities have accelerated throughout and even spread to the unforested southern regions.75

The same document states that, thanks to measures employed by the police and the Wehrmacht, “the gang was gradually liquidated, and south of Kyiv it was utterly destroyed.” The main part of Naumov’s detachment fought its way into Belarus, where in early April it joined up with Kovpak’s detachment. It is difficult not to call the steppe raid a success: during the course of the two-month operation Naumov’s men covered 2,400 km, crossed 18 rivers and 15 railways, and occupied ten raion centers. According to Naumov’s own information, during the raid the partisans lost 114 men, another 85 disappeared without a trace, and 77 were wounded.76 In fact, during this period the unit shrank from 650 men to 253, and only a small number of those partisans who had left the unit merged with other detachments. Until that point the partisans had felt free and easy in the enemy’s rear: on 4–5 April 1943 the Sumy unit crossed the Prypiat River into Belarus, along the way destroying a German river convoy consisting of five barges

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52  •  Stalin’s Commandos and an armored cutter. The Germans sent out a search party for the lost convoy—a flotilla consisting of two armored river steamboats, four armored cutters, and a motorized boat. After crossing the river, Kovpak’s force joined a number of other large UShPD units, which Hryhorii Balytsky, the commander of the Stalin Detachment, described as a joyous event: “On 7 April 1943 … at 9:00, together with [Oleksii] Fedorov I went to see [Sydir] Kolpak (the com[mander of the large Sumy] partisan unit) … At 12:00 the four Heroes of the Soviet Union assembled—Fedorov, Kolpak, Naumov, and I. We drank, enjoyed ourselves, and finally the battle on the Prypiat River began.”77 Kovpak maintained that the Germans made a serious mistake during this battle: During the approach to the village that was some 5 km away, the enemy began a bombardment of the riverbanks … Our ambush did not show itself … Then, once the entire convoy of vessels was in a pincer formation, our cannon and armored weapons struck at the buffer … Our machine gun fire forced the boats’ command to hide in the hold … All the boats were sunk. In one of the steamboats the command was still trying to resist, then a group of fighters … boarded the steamboat and with the [Germans’] own machine gun left on deck began spraying the deck, destroying the Hitlerites who were in the holds.78

Another problem was then added to those faced by the German occupation administration: in early 1943 the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists stepped up its activities. Taking advantage of the turning-point in the mood of the population, the Banderites demonstrated the hidden capacities of their long-term secret-agent infiltration of collaborationist units, about which the SD reported on 19 March 1943: In recent weeks the general activities of the gangs have grown extraordinarily. In the Volyn-Podillia General District a nationalUkrainian … gang is demonstrating high-level activity. Numerous attacks on the territory east of the Rivne–Lutsk highway are being carried out for the most part by members of this gang. There have been an increasing number of incidents in which armed guard and Cossack units have joined the gangs. For example, after burning down a sawmill, a Cossack unit operating in Tsuman went over to a gang located nearby; 55 members of guard formations abandoned a guard battalion located in Berezyna and merged with one of the gangs, taking 3 light machine guns and personal weapons.79

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A Brief Overview of the History of Soviet Partisan Warfare in Ukraine  •  53 The Banderites, who had gained control over a number of territories in Volyn and Polissia, were hindering the Germans’ efforts to collect food levies and deport Ostarbeiter (“Eastern worker”) laborers. In June 1943 Heinrich Schöne, the head of the General District of Volyn and Podillia (Generalbezierk Wolhynien und Podolien) expressed his extreme concern in a note to Alfred Rosenberg: “There is not a single area in Volyn that is not infected by the gangs. Especially in the western areas—Liuboml, Volodymyr-Volynsky, Horokhiv, Dubno, and Kremianets—gang activities have attained such forms that already in the past several weeks it is possible to speak of an armed uprising which, naturally, has still not shown itself decisively.”80 However, the UShPD, whose forces had doubled between November 1942 and March 1943, continued to deploy fresh forces to Right-Bank and Western Ukraine in the spring of 1943: “As of 1 April 1943, 7 large units encompassing 48 detachments numbering 7,812 partisans and 35 independently functioning detachments and groups numbering 3,096 partisans were in communication with the Ukrainian Staff and its representatives in the Military Councils of the fronts; altogether 10,908 people.”81 These figures do not include the personnel of detachments of the NKVD USSR and the GRU. These “troops” were made up of 0.03 per cent of Ukraine’s prewar population. Their growth was limited by the quantity of weapons and ammunition, cadres of commanders, organizers, and saboteur specialists, the number of airplanes at the UShPD’s disposal, and non-flying weather (because of which a number of flights fell through): “As a result, [in May] nearly all the large units and detachments of Right-Bank Ukraine, in anticipation of cargo, gathered around one of Saburov’s landing strips in Lelchitsy raion of Polesie oblast [Belarusian SSR], which has created a clearcut threat of their encirclement by the enemy.”82 Nevertheless, the Soviet side felt confident in the Polissia region. In early April 1943 Demian Korotchenko, secretary of the CC CP(B)U, arrived by plane in the partisan zone, and in May a conference took place between the commanders and commissars of the seven large units and representatives of the UShPD, the CC CP(B)U and the Komsomol. In early June 1943 Tymofii Strokach paid a visit to his subordinates, including Saburov’s unit, which at the time was located 6 kilometers from the nearest German units. The experienced saboteur Ilya Starinov conducted on-site training in handling explosives with officers and saboteurs attached to large units. According to an assessment by members of the AK Polish underground, at this very time the red partisans “had complete control” over the Belarusian–Ukrainian borderland:

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54  •  Stalin’s Commandos In May action was intensified, several deliveries were dispatched by air (commanders, instructors, weapons, ammunition). The partisans who are present are roaming throughout the entire territory of Polissia without restrictions. They appear on the outskirts of cities (Brest, Pinsk, Kobryn) … Around 200 trains were derailed in Polissia in May alone … Attacks on property and farms … Counterresistance action does not produce results. In numerous skirmishes and battles each of the two sides lose several killed and more than a dozen wounded … Firing on cars on the highway is all in a day’s work. The partisans are avoiding large-scale clashes with the Germans. They are destroying the local police and all those assisting the Germans.83

In Left-Bank Ukraine during this same period the Germans launched an anti-partisan offensive. The secretary of the CC CP(B)U’s organizational and instructional department, I. Mironov, described the Germans’ actions as a combination of punitive measures and military operations: The offensive began from the Chernihiv side, in the direction of [the area] between the Dnipro and the mouth of the Desna. At first, the Germans attacked Comrade Taranushchenko’s detachment, which did not engage in battle and scattered. Continuing the offensive, en route the Germans burned villages and destroyed the population without exception. According to various reconnaissance data, a combined German division was attacking in this area with tanks, armored vehicles, heavy artillery, mortars, and bomber aircraft.84

In Chernihiv and Sumy oblasts the Germans managed to surround a few detachments temporarily. The large Chernihiv unit also suffered losses. During the escape from encirclement on 6 July its commander and the secretary of the Chernihiv oblast committee of the CP(B)U, Mykola Popudrenko, was killed. However, after the partisans managed to escape, they continued their operations in the north-western part of the Ukrainian SSR. The Germans’ brief tactical successes did not alter the general situation, which was turning out to be detrimental to the Germans.

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A Brief Overview of the History of Soviet Partisan Warfare in Ukraine  •  55

The Third Year: Successes and Complications As a result of the successful Red Army offensive, the Germans have lost not only Donetsk coal, but also the richest grain-producing regions of Ukraine, and there is no reason to suppose that they will not also lose the rest of Ukraine in the near future. […] Fascist Germany is passing through a deep crisis. It is facing a disaster. ACP(B) Central Committee General Secretary Joseph Stalin, in a report to a session of the Moscow City Soviet, 6 November 1943

In the summer of 1943 a report produced by the Wehrmacht’s rear structures for the headquarters of Army Group South described the failure of the occupation policies in the forested zone stretching from Russia to Poland: Gangs organized partly in mil[itary]-style are emerging in areas that have been calm before now … The impression is growing among the population that the Germans will not be masters of the situation … In a growing mass from the Briansk Forest to the border of the Generalgouvernement, large communist gangs with nationalistic slogans and, farther to the west, national gangs are fighting shoulder to shoulder against us.85

The last large-scale, planned German operation against Soviet Ukrainian partisans took place on the border of Belarus and Ukraine in June–July 1943. An entry about the struggle against the partisans, recorded in the journal kept by the chief of the SS headquarters, Erich von dem BachZelewski, reveals his satisfaction: The order to end Operation Seidlitz and the transfer of forces to the area of the national-Ukrainian uprising [in Volyn]. The success of Operation Seidlitz on the territory between the Ovruch and Mozyr [the area of the airfield around which were concentrated the main forces of the UShPD—A.G.]. Killed enemies, 2,768; gang accomplices, 2,338; prisoners, 603; destroyed villages, 54; destroyed bandit camps, 807. Trophies: 2 pieces of ordnance, 8 mortars, 437 rifles, 34 submachine guns …86

According to the report, 5,000 men were killed, while the weapons for up to 500 troops were captured as trophies, fewer than the number of prisoners. Thus, the commander of the large Zhytomyr unit, Stepan Malikov, had a guarded view of the results of the operation: “For one

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56  •  Stalin’s Commandos month the German cannibals burned down villages, killed, looted, and carried off the population of Zhytomyr oblast, but they did not inflict any harm on the partisans.”87 As of 1 July 1943, 17 large units and 160 independent detachments were operating in Ukraine and the adjoining oblasts of the Belarusian SSR and the RSFSR: a total of 29,457 partisans, two-thirds of whom were in communication with the UShPD. According to the UShPD’s own data from this period, 57.8 per cent of the 139,583 partisans who were active in the occupied regions of the USSR were based in Belarus, 24.6 per cent in Russia, but only 15.7 per cent in Ukraine.88 One of the principal tasks of these forces was to gain control over the Western Ukraine oblasts. In July 1943 the large Chernihiv-Volyn unit commanded by Oleksii Fedorov appeared in the territory controlled by the nationalists: the center of Volyn oblast. According to a German intelligence report, Fedorov “appeared in the west, but did not find followers; on the contrary, he found opponents … He began sabotaging communications. Khrushchev assisted him by [sending] airplanes to drop ‘hellish discs— [delayed-action] mines’; he applies them skillfully, he mines railways and severely impedes the normal work of the railways.”89 For a lengthy period of time Eastern Galicia remained a terra incognita to the UShPD and under the Germans’ control.90 Furthermore, this region was criss-crossed by the Wehrmacht’s most important communication systems, including the Lviv and Ternopil railway junctions. In the summer of 1943 the situation changed as the result of a raid into the Carpathian Mountains carried out by the Sumy unit, which numbered 1,900 men at the beginning of the operation. The ultimate goal was to enter Chernivtsi oblast (Northern Bukovina). The unit was supposed to carry out acts of sabotage in oilfields, especially in Romania. By late July the partisans began to destroy oil rigs in the Carpathian Mountains, but the Germans’ intensified activities meant that the plan was not completed. In the mountains, where the partisans fled to escape pursuit, they abandoned part of their transport train and destroyed ordnance and mortars. Tracked by German aviation, Kovpak’s unit reached Deliatyn (Stanyslaviv oblast, Ukrainian SSR), where on 3–4 August 1943 it was smashed but not destroyed by German and Hungarian units. Petro Kulbaka, the commander of the 2nd Regiment of Kovpak’s division, recalled this battle: After crossing the Prut River, we were met head-on by a battalion of Germans … During this period we did not have a united combat operations leadership [Rudnev and Kovpak had had a falling out—A.G.], Rudnev went in one direction, Sidor Artemevich gave the direction of

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A Brief Overview of the History of Soviet Partisan Warfare in Ukraine  •  57 the strike a bit inopportunely, some drifted; as a result, we had a failed operation when we could have done great things.91

A different version of the failure was provided by the unit’s radio operator Boris Karasev: After breaching the Germans’ defense [and] passing through the entire city, we arrived at the outskirts of Deliatyn, where the Germans had hidden themselves on the knolls, and they opened up a hurricane-like cross-fire at us. The order of the unit’s commissar Rudnev was audible: “Infantry forward, infantry forward!” But there was no infantry: it had stayed in the city, where it was “bombing” [looting—A.G.] stores at the time.92

The large unit suffered significant losses, and Rudnev was killed. Splitting into seven detachments, the unit broke out of the encirclement with the goal of continuing the partisan struggle in the Carpathian region. However, the maneuver turned into a retreat to Polissia, during which Kovpak was wounded. The raid garnered the attention of the highest-ranking Soviet and Nazi93 commands. On 3 August 1943 Reichsführer Heinrich Himmler sent an express telegram ordering his subordinates, “regardless of any difficulties, to hunt down Kolpak and his gang until such time as the men surrender themselves and Kolpak ends up in our hands dead or alive.”94 Stalin granted Strokach and Khrushchev’s request for long-range aviation to assist Kovpak’s men. However, owing to the fact that the August nights were slightly too short for transport planes to fly deep into the rear of the Wehrmacht, groups continued to operate without the support of the “Soviet mainland.” Despite some losses, all seven detachments reached Polissia. The partisans failed to complete the plan to consolidate their grip on the Carpathians. Kovpak reported the causes of the failure to the UShPD: “The mood of the Hutsul mountain people was often nearly hostile. The attitude [to the partisans] of the population of Polish villages was especially favorable. Among the Ukrainians were many traitors, German lackeys.”95 A report prepared by a Ukrainian functionary working for the Germans described the actions of Ukrainian nationalists: “the rapid flight of Kolpak and his people from the mountains, as the Hutsuls were hunting them down like bears.”96 During the course of the raid the unit crossed the territory of eight Ukrainian and Belarusian oblasts, and during a three-month period it lost approximately 600 men—one-third of its personnel—who were killed or lost without a trace.97

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58  •  Stalin’s Commandos Kovpak thought that the UShPD would punish him for his failure, but the opposite happened: for this raid he received his second Gold Star of the Hero of the Soviet Union because his unit was the only one that had penetrated so deeply into Galicia in 1943. Despite Strokach’s orders—the tone of which had become increasingly irritable over time—other units had entered the territory of the Generalgouvernement only briefly and then departed to Volyn, Polissia or Podillia. A survey prepared by an AK underground member noted that the arrival of Kovpak’s men in Eastern Galicia resulted in a number of changes: “1) General fear both among the Germans and the Ukrainians; 2) Exasperation of the Ukr[ainians] as a result of the Germans sending their ‘best soldiers’ (policemen) to fight the partisans; 3) A rise in incidents of banditry and attacks.”98 The Ukrainian nationalists were also becoming more active.99 Meanwhile, the Soviet partisans, whose numbers were growing, began expanding their zone of operations in Polissia and Volyn as well as in central Ukraine. Between 19 June and 18 August a large unit (670 fighters) led by Yakiv Melnyk carried out a raid into Vinnytsia oblast; earlier, it had entered Right-Bank Ukraine from the Sumy and Chernihiv regions. The detachment passed through Zhytomyr oblast and entered Vinnytsia oblast, where Hitler’s headquarters, Wolf’s Lair, was based. Spotting Melnyk’s men from the air, the Germans tried to destroy the unit. The skirmish was recounted by a rank-and-file soldier named Vasyl Yermolenko: On 29 July a battle took place near the village of Zhyvchyk, which lasted until the very evening. It was a terrible massacre. The first row advanced against the partisans—Schutzmannschaft from Kamianets-Podilsky and the Germans in back. And they are directing such fire that splinters are flying up from the road … The Germans broke through to our transport train, where there were 300 wagons. About 20 seriously wounded men were lying there (the other wounded were walking …). On each cart was a case of explosive material, ammonal … To avoid being captured, the wounded blew up the ammonal … Everything was tossed about—a terrible judgment … And the trinitrotoluene is burning with the smoke, all around night fell amidst the daylight. The Germans set off a rocket and departed [….] A total of 200 [partisans] were killed and as many were wounded. There were more losses among the Germans and the policemen because they were attacking.100

Dividing into three groups, the large unit broke out of the encirclement and returned to Polissia via the territories of Kamianets-Podilsky, Rivne, and Zhytomyr oblasts.

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A Brief Overview of the History of Soviet Partisan Warfare in Ukraine  •  59 A similar fate befell a raid carried out by the large cavalry unit (340 fighters) led by Mikhail Naumov. Its mission was to enter the northern districts of Kirovohrad oblast,101 but owing to the Germans’ counteractions, the unit failed to reach the designated district. By mid-September 1943 Naumov’s detachments, which had expanded to 1,200 men, were operating on the boundary between Zhytomyr and Kyiv oblasts. The reports of German reconnoiterers described Naumov as an experienced partisan: “Among the bandits he enjoys great popularity and is renowned for the ingenuity of [his] tactical bandit methods … He is utterly dangerous for his ability to create an unexpected threat to headquarters, mainly to military and governmental ranks (individuals).”102 In the summer of 1943 the large Beria unit was operating in the northwestern part of Zhytomyr oblast; its commander, Andrii Hrabchak, had earned the praise of both the UShPD103 and the German intelligence services: “In his pursuit of glory he is constantly devising new methods, sabotage surprises … He deals exclusively in sabotage and has success.”104 Attempts to organize a struggle in Ukraine’s southern oblasts were somewhat more successful than in 1941–42, a fact that is also corroborated by German sources.105 In the summer of 1943 more than half of the partisans who had been sent into the Germans’ rear survived.106 In September 1943 the Polish underground, whose members were close to the AK, reported about the reds’ victories in Polissia: Outside the boundaries of large centers the occupier has no power … Southern Polissia … is the sphere of influence of the Ukr[ainian] partisans [the nationalists—A.G.]. Northern [Polissia] … has been captured by Soviet partisans … Great courage was shown by Soviet commanders during the destruction of railroads and depots near Brest-Volynsky in the second half of July. Estates are being systematically burned down and communications are being attacked. Trains are always being shelled; they travel only in the daytime … German auxiliary detachments, created for the struggle against sabotage, are fleeing to the gangs: that happened with the Ukrainian permanent police in Dorohychyn and with the Caucasus mountain people and the Cossacks. Polish police battalions are the exception.107

At this time partisan commanders were tasked with providing assistance to the Red Army to force a crossing of the Dnipro, Desna, and Prypiat rivers. In addition, the UShPD forces, in cooperation with front-line units, were supposed to capture raion centers and even cities. At one meeting Strokach declared that one of the partisans’ most important tasks was to burst into Kyiv ahead of the Red Army.108

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60  •  Stalin’s Commandos Between July and October 1943, in connection with the Red Army offensive, up to 15,000 partisans in Left-Bank Ukraine appeared in the Soviet rear area, thus becoming part of the Red Army and abandoning their partisan status. Despite this, because of local recruitment, the total number of partisans did not decrease. In early October 1943 Khrushchev wrote to Stalin: “At the present time, a total of more than 30,000 armed partisans are operating in Ukraine, in the rear of the enemy.”109 Over 17,000 of them were assigned to assist the Red Army to make a forced crossing of the Dnipro.110 In the fall of 1943 the partisan forces located and organized 25 crossings of the Dnipro, Desna, and Prypiat rivers. Individual detachments served as bases for Soviet air landing operations and as guides for advance units of the Red Army; they also helped Red Army troops to escape encirclement. In the third year of the war it was necessary to fight closer to the Wehrmacht’s rear, which was saturated with front-line units. Because of this, among other reasons, the mission to enter Kyiv first was not carried out, despite the fact that in 1943–44 the occupation by red partisans of individual railway stations and raion centers had become the norm. In December 1943 the front line was breached in the vicinity of Ovruch in Zhytomyr oblast. For a lengthy period of time the Soviet side lacked the necessary forces to use the breach to launch an offensive, and the German side failed to neutralize the breach. As a result, in addition to air deliveries, the partisans supplied 786 tons of cargo through the “Ovruch corridor between 10 December 1943 and 25 March 1944: 28 pieces of ordnance, 246 mortars, 218 antitank weapons, 245 machine guns, nearly 5,000 submachine guns, 12.6 million cartridges, nearly 40,000 shells and mines, 90 tons of explosives, other weaponry, and military property.”111 As of 1 January 1944 the UShPD was communicating with 43,500 partisans based in the rear of the Wehrmacht.112 Groups of the NKGB and the RU GSh KA were also operating on German-occupied territory. The Center assigned a number of new missions to this army of partisans, the first of which was a march to Eastern Galicia—a destination to which they had no desire to go. One of them was Mikhail Naumov, whose unwillingness to go there is attested by entries recorded in his journal in late 1943–early 1944: Instead of the expected snow, a thick and raw fog descended. The last snow is disappearing. Outside are large puddles of water … It seems that even nature has risen up against us … For now, one does not think about sleigh rides … The winter of 43–44 is beginning sluggishly, unsuccessfully … I pray to my god that by my arrival the Germans will have expelled the Banderite gangs from … Western Ukraine.113

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A Brief Overview of the History of Soviet Partisan Warfare in Ukraine  •  61 The UShPD’s plan for the first six months of 1944 was a failure. Only Mikhail Shukaev’s large ‘Stalin’ unit completed the raid into the Carpathians—with great losses—and headed farther, into Slovakia. (The unit’s initial mission was to cross over into Odesa oblast.) Responding to Strokach’s complaints, on 4 March 1944 Vershyhora noted that one of the reasons for the partisans’ reluctance to carry out the order was that “Soviet partisans in Galicia … feel as though they are in Germany, but in Poland it is no worse than in current Soviet districts.”114 Crossing Lublin Voivodeship, Kovpak’s division reached Warsaw and from there traveled on to Belarus, where it remained until the arrival of the Red Army. Mikołaj Kunicki, the commander of a Polish–Soviet partisan detachment, recalled that after they crossed from the Lublin district into Ukrainian Galicia, the raid became a torment: “A UPA gang took us suddenly in a crossfire from two small villages at the same time … All around us at a distance of 20 km the village residents were raising the alarm … The Germans launched a pursuit.” 115 Kunicki was forced to head for the Carpathians. In accounts of the conditions in Galicia, the reds conducted them­selves as though they were on enemy territory. On 17 March 1944 General Tadeusz Komorowski (codenamed “Lawina”) of the Armia Krajowa sent a report to London entitled “Detachments of Soviet Partisans in Lviv District,” in which he noted that “Soviet detachments fight well, they are very well armed, they are poorly fitted out with uniforms. The attitude to the Poles is irreproachable; they are shooting Ukrainians and Germans.”116 Among the other causes of the failure of the UShPD’s plan for 1944 was the immense fatigue of the partisan personnel, against which the Banderites were throwing fresh forces. This exhaustion was noted not only in internal documents but also in OUN reports,117 for example one dated June 1944 in Galicia: In recent times many Bolshevik partisans have deserted their detachments because of hunger. They gave their weapons to the peasants and themselves remained with the villagers to work on the farms. They [the deserters] say that they do not want to have anything to do with bandits who shoot at their wounded comrades.118

Nevertheless, what the red partisans of Ukraine managed to accomplish in 1943–44 may still be called a success. During the third year of the war they were actively engaged in sabotage activities. According to data compiled by the UShPD’s operational department, during the second half of 1943 Soviet Ukrainian partisans blew up four times as many troop trains as were destroyed in the first two years of the war.119

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62  •  Stalin’s Commandos Moreover, the activities of the Ukrainian partisans were more effective than those undertaken by the Belarusian partisans. According to statistics compiled by the staffs of the partisan movement, during the war the partisans based in forested Belarus—who on average outnumbered their Ukrainian colleagues by a ratio of four to one—destroyed only 2.3 times more trains than the partisans subordinated to the UShPD.120 Representatives of Ukraine’s partisan detachments periodically sent notes to Khrushchev and Strokach, accusing their Belarusian colleagues of passivity, lack of professionalism, and excessive distortion of results concerning the destruction of trains.121 The reason for the comparative success of the Ukrainian reds remained the same: the autonomy of the UShPD and the professionalism of its leadership. Unlike the Belarusians, the partisans of Ukraine did not carry out Ponomarenko’s absurd122 orders concerning the destruction of railway tracks, in particular during the course of Operations “Concert” and the “Railway War.” Refusing to squander valuable trinitrotoluene on simply destroying tracks which the Germans quickly replaced, they directly blew up the trains.123 In the spring of 1944 the main formations of the UShPD entered the Soviet rear, though some of them crossed into Slovakia and others into Poland, where they made an impression on the leadership of the Generalgouvernement, which up until then had been dealing mostly with poorly equipped Polish partisans, of various political stripes, who had not conducted any significant sabotage or combat activities. On 7 July 1944, during the so-called “session of the leadership,” the remarks made by Wilhelm Koppe, chief of the security police in the Generalgouvernement, were tinged with panic: “Their leadership consists of the best Russian officers. These people have obtained an education spanning many years; you can whip them for entire days, but it is not possible to expel them from this territory. The struggle against them is very difficult, they are well armed. Because of their spiritual connection to Soviet ideology, they have become fanatical fighters.”124 In July–August 1944 the Red Army occupied not only Western Ukraine but also Eastern Poland—all the way to Warsaw. Stalin’s partisan war in Ukraine was over. The personnel of some detachments merged with the Red Army, while others joined the notorious penal combat battalions;125 some of the former forest soldiers returned to their peacetime occupations, while others joined the NKVD and NKGB. For example, Kovpak’s division fought against the UPA in September–October 1944, and it was disbanded on 8 November. The core of the division was used to form a separate cavalry brigade of NKVD Interior Troops,126 who were also thrown into the struggle against the Ukrainian nationalists. ***

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A Brief Overview of the History of Soviet Partisan Warfare in Ukraine  •  63 The description of the Soviet partisan struggle during World War II may be followed up with this question: What were the reasons for the Third Reich’s failure in its anti-partisan struggle? First of all, Germany lacked sufficient forces: weapons and ammunition as well as soldiers. The second reason was the brutal nature of the German occupation, including the methods of combating the partisans. During the Franco-Prussian War in 1870 and during World War I the German authorities in Belgium brutally put down all signs of resistance from the civilian population by shooting hostages. During World War II this tradition was expanded by “scientifically based racism,” which led to a rash of atrocities. The Holocaust also made an impression on the inhabitants of the occupied territories, concerning which the head of the gendarmerie in Brest-Litovsk district, for example, wrote the following in late 1942: “There is a rumor circulating among the inhabitants that after the Jewish action, Russians will be the first to be shot, then Poles, and then Ukrainians.”127 It is likely that the treatment of their erstwhile enemies horrified the population even more: the Germans killed, by starvation or horrific conditions, the majority of their prisoners, who perished from hunger and cold in the winter of 1941–42. As early as 28 October 1941, the head of the Wehrmacht’s sabotage service in the southern sector of the Soviet–German front, Theodor Oberländer, wrote that in Ukraine the German army was quickly forfeiting the sympathies of the inhabitants because of the murder of prisoners.128 It is interesting to compare the Nazis’ administrative methods and anti-partisan struggle with the regime that was established in southeastern Ukraine by the rulers of monarchist Romania. For the majority of its population, the Romanians had secured entirely acceptable living conditions. In order to strengthen loyalty to the state, and to minimize the possibility of Soviet agents penetrating the structures of the uniformed forces, it was decided not to create an independent auxiliary police service in Bessarabia, Bukovina and Transnistria: the situation was instead handled by the Romanian police, gendarmerie, and the secret police known as Sigurant¸a. During the course of anti-partisan operations, the Romanian police did not exterminate all those that fell into their hands, but did kill members of detachments. Partisans’ helpers and members of the communist underground were arrested and sent to prison – a number of them were shot, but before the arrival of the Red Army many of the remaining prisoners were freed.129 Among the local inhabitants the Romanian

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64  •  Stalin’s Commandos uniformed forces set up a system of stool-pigeons who instantly informed the authorities about the appearance of the reds on Romanian territory;130 these were those partisans who were mostly being parachuted into southeastern Ukraine. The authorities killed these “newcomers” or took them prisoner.131 According to UShPD information, Ukrainians in Bukovina, who constituted the main part of the population, were loyal to the authorities: Intelligence data can be obtained only by means of conducting one’s own [military] intelligence [of partisan groups], as it is utterly impossible to acquire a secret agent intelligence service … There are no local partisan detachments in a given district … In a given sector a landing group of 10–12 men cannot function successfully. It is indispensable to drop such groups deep into enemy territory [right into Romania—A.G.] … The deeper from the front line into enemy territory, the better the conditions for the survival of partisan groups.132

Perhaps the only really weak point in the struggle of the Romanians against the partisans and secret agents was corruption—for a bribe, policemen would even let free a captured soldier who had been sentenced to be shot. Moreover, Alexander Milshtein, who lived in Sharhorid in Vinnytsia oblast, recalls that—under orders from the partisans (and with their money)—he bought a radio transmitter from a Romanian gendarme. And the seller knew that the equipment was intended for the enemy.133 Thirdly, the Germans losing the war against the partisans was also the consequence of Hitler’s particular administrative style. At issue here is internal conflict: in other words, the struggle for supremacy among authorized powers.134 Whereas the serving Kaiser regarded the state as a single organism, the Nazis thought in feudal terms, and they replaced care for the interests of the entire state system with devotion to the Führer. From mid-1942 the struggle against “banditry” on occupied Soviet territory was somewhat centralized and entrusted to the SS.135 But the representatives of the SS were not very interested in the successes of antipartisan operations, inasmuch as police stations, police battalions, and Waffen-SS units were only targets of partisan attacks to an insignificant degree. Instead, the attention of saboteurs was drawn above all to economic facilities and, secondly, to communications—mostly railroads. In other words, the Soviet partisans caused considerable anxiety for the civilian administration as well as representatives of economic institutions

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A Brief Overview of the History of Soviet Partisan Warfare in Ukraine  •  65 and departments. The protection of railways was either under the direct supervision of the Wehrmacht, or, in some cases, the Wehrmacht was specifically interested in protecting their normal operation. In 1943–44 the Wehrmacht, the civilian administration, and the SS, which included the police, were also embroiled in a perpetual war of supremacy, and on the personal level they treated each other arrogantly. With the escalation of partisan attacks, both the civilian administration and the Wehrmacht bombarded their leaderships, as well as the police organization, with notes requesting assistance. Hitler would then give Himmler an order to correct the situation, or the head of the SS himself would issue instructions down through the ranks of his organization about conducting anti-partisan operations. Despite the Germans’ numerical superiority, such operations were dangerous for those who were hunting down the forest soldiers. As early as September 1942, SD information indicated the masterfulness of the Soviet commandos: “The gangs are well directed tactically. In view of the centralized measures concerning the struggle against gangs or the significant use of police forces, they split into small [detachments] in order to make pursuit impossible, to divide the forces sent after them, and to destroy them one by one.”136 An officer carrying out a dragnet operation had to be prepared for losses among his unit’s personnel. In dispatches sent by SS commanders, data on their losses leads one to wonder whether an operation had actually taken place or whether a few SS men had been killed, say, as a result of careless handling of weapons. Owing to their superior administration, the use of NKVD Interior Troops allowed for a greater intensity of anti-insurgent measures in Western Ukraine. A Ukrainian insurgent spoke of them with respect: “These are not Germans, who slept at night. There is no peace from them either in the daytime or night-time.”137 Still, even the officials in Hitler’s power apparatus, a system infected by distorted information, were unable to invent their own activities. For that reason, the SS organized the mass extermination of civilians who had been observed assisting the partisans, or who were simply in an area where an operation was being conducted. After sending off reports to Berlin about the latest victory, measured by the number of burned villages and destroyed “gang accomplices,” the units returned to their garrisons. The partisans, who, more often than not, had simply waited out the period of danger, reverted to their earlier activities: blowing up trains carrying ammunition and food supplies for the Wehrmacht, and burning down agricultural estates, storehouses, and stables.

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66  •  Stalin’s Commandos

War between Ukrainian Insurgents and Ukrainian Partisans According to the British scholar Richard Overy, “Nowhere was the tension between Soviet partisans and the local population as marked or as dangerous as it was throughout the [Western] Ukraine.”138 This impression is largely due to the network of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists, the most significant of all the political forces in the German-occupied eastern regions.139 Emerging in the 1920s, the OUN split into two factions in 1940–41. The more numerous and radical “youths” were headed by Stepan Bandera, while the more moderate émigrés (“old men”) were headed by Andrii Melnyk. The Banderites’ close cooperation with the Third Reich ended on 15 September 1941, when the Germans, encouraged by their successes at the front and irritated by the propaganda of Ukrainian independence, began to execute and arrest the nationalists. However, a Banderite underground remained in Western Ukraine; their main enemy was still “Russia—white or red.” Even before the war began, the Banderites had urged the destruction of those who had encircled them: “The struggle against them is reckless. Disseminate slogans in good time: ‘Not a single piece of bread for the Russians! May the strays croak! May the insatiable katsaps [Russians] croak! We remember the years of death by starvation! Do not be merciful! There was no mercy for us! Do not help the uninvited Muscovite-Jewish guests!’”140 In 1941 all attempts to organize a partisan war in Western Ukraine failed. Biding their time, in 1942 the Banderites had a negative attitude to the partisan struggle. According to data collected by the German security services, a detachment of Soviet parachutists who were dropped in early November 1942 near the town of Rokytne in the Volyn region encountered a group of Banderites. During the battle some of the parachutists were killed, and the nationalists captured trophies, including weapons.141 Groups attached to the GRU and the NKVD USSR that were sent to the Volyn region in 1942 were assigned intelligence-gathering tasks, and they sought to avoid confrontations with the nationalist underground and even held negotiations with them. In late 1942–early 1943 UShPD detachments arrived in Volyn, including Kovpak and Saburov’s, which had been assigned mostly sabotage and combat tasks. Partly in reaction to the incursion, in February 1943 the Banderites adopted—and in March and April implemented—the decision to create the Ukrainian Insurgent Army. According to Kovpak’s information,

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A Brief Overview of the History of Soviet Partisan Warfare in Ukraine  •  67 on 26 February the Sumy unit “cleansed” two raions in Rivne oblast of Banderites: “As a result of the operation 8 people were captured … they were disarmed and after a conversation they were released. This is our first clash with the nationalists. In a number of villages we held meetings and discussions with the population with the goal of unmasking the nationalists.”142 During the night of 6–7 March an OUN detachment in the village of Bohushi, Rivne oblast, attacked a group of partisans from Medvedev’s detachments. Several partisans were killed during the skirmish.143 A detachment of the NKVD USSR struck back, and on 9 March a group numbering 56 men attacked Bohushi. According to the reds’ documentation, more than 100 nationalists were killed, 30 were wounded, and only 18 rifles were captured.144 On 16 March the Banderites attacked a sabotage group of the detach­ ment “24th Anniversary of the RKKA,” part of Saburov’s unit, capturing and torturing to death one partisan, who was then publicly hanged. Skirmishes with Medvedev’s detachment as well as UShPD formations continued in March and then April.145 The UPA sought to expand its activities into the southern districts of the Belarusian SSR, which the nationalists considered part of Ukraine. In April an OUN detachment in Pinsk oblast succeeded in recruiting several partisans from the Belarusian Pinsk unit. On orders from the Banderites, they killed Boris Mikhailovsky, the commissar of the Suvorov Detachment, and four rank-and-file soldiers. In response, the command of the Molotov Brigade lured an OUN group into taking part in negotiations. This episode was recalled by Aleksei Kleshchev, commander of the Pinsk unit: During the negotiations between our group and the group of nationalists, two prepared combat partisan detachments of the Molotov Brigade surrounded them and issued an ultimatum to them: hand over all weapons and surrender to the brigade command. The group, numbering 71 nationalists, tried to engage in combat, but the Molotov Brigade shot down every last one of them with a machine gun.146

In late May the partisans of the Pinsk unit killed 25 more insurgents. The partisans initially underestimated the OUN and the UPA, and the command centers continued to do so until late 1945. On 23 March 1943 Khrushchev, in response to demands being sent from “local areas,” sent a letter to Kovpak and Rudnev, the contents of which were disseminated among other partisans in the form of a wireless message. It stated that the main goal remained the struggle against the Germans and that they should

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68  •  Stalin’s Commandos not fight the nationalists if the nationalists were not attacking them. The message urged the partisans to undermine insurgent detachments by means of propaganda,147 which they initially tried to do. But the Banderites reacted to the partisans’ sabotage activities more extremely than to their propaganda efforts. In “retaliation” for trains that were being blown up by the partisans, the Germans shot hostages in jails, including nationalists, and burned down Ukrainian villages where many members of the OUN underground were billeted. Thus, beginning in June 1943, clashes between the reds and the nationalists turned into a genuine war between Ukrainian partisans and Ukrainian insurgents. On 18 June Rudnev, the commissar of the Sumy unit, recorded the following description of the events taking place in Rivne oblast in his journal: “Our reconnaissance of the 4th Battalion, which was sent along the route past the Sluch River, engaged in battles over two days … and it was forced to retreat without completing the mission. During our approach to the v[illage] of Mykhalyn shooting broke out, and the swine are shooting from windows, bushes, and even [fields of] rye.”148 After a number of clashes with the UPA, on 23 June Rudnev recorded the following entry: All the villages are infected with the nationalists. They often shoot from around a corner, from bushes, from the rye, etc. Our men rarely respond. We shoot only when we see someone shooting … My deputy Androsov was talking to some girls, [and] 7 bearded peasants came up and were also listening to him, but later, seeing that he was alone, they grabbed rifles out of the rye and began shooting at him. They killed his horse and began chasing him, and if fighters had not rushed up in time, they would have killed him.149

On 24 June a transport unit carrying wounded insurgents accidently drove into the middle of a transport unit of Kovpak’s men. After this, the partisans launched an operation to “comb through” the adjoining forested tracts, and Rudnev recorded these famous words in his journal: “My nerves are so strained that I am barely eating a thing … It is a very simple thing to kill; but one should try to avoid this. The nationalists are our enemies, but they are fighting Germans. So maneuver and think here.” Merely by conducting negotiations with the Banderites and then departing to Galicia, Kovpak’s men could continue their raid more or less in peace. After returning from the raid in August–September 1943, groups attached to the Sumy unit were subjected to attacks by the nationalistic

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A Brief Overview of the History of Soviet Partisan Warfare in Ukraine  •  69 Ukrainian People’s Self-Defense (UNS) in Galicia and the UPA in Volyn. In a number of cases, Kovpak’s men had to dress up as Banderites in order to proceed unharmed through Ukrainian villages. The following instructions, handed down by an OUN official based in Galicia to an underground member, reveal the Banderites’ tactics in the struggle against the reds in 1943–44: Organize fighting groups of 3–4 people in villages … Station responsible sentry posts throughout villages, and the sentry should report as soon as he sees partisans … Carry out actions against the partisans very carefully, so that there will be no victims on our side: for us the main thing is for the partisans to be afraid that they are being killed here, so that the commune [Soviet government] does not send any more of its partisans here. At the same time, do not conduct actions when there are Germans in a village … Do not touch the partisans in a village: escort them into a field and then shoot them.150

In June 1943 clashes also began in the area east of Rivne oblast, where Saburov’s unit and its various detachments, including those under Ivan Shitov’s command, were operating. The head of the Kamianets-Podilsky Staff of the Partisan Movement recalled one of the battles fought by that unit: On 14 June the Khrushchev Detachment was sending wounded to the airfield. In the woods near Rokytne up to 600 Banderites attacked the accompanying 130 partisans. They fought a savage battle for two and a half hours, they practically engaged in hand-to-hand combat at a distance of 15–20 meters. I myself took part in this battle and should say that the nationalists fight solidly. They retreated only when they suffered greater losses—around 40 killed and up to 150 wounded. The partisans, the participants of these battles, said that they had never before seen such brazen fellows in battle. At the hands of the nationalists we lost [in 1943–44] many hundreds of outstanding partisan saboteurs.151

The largest-scale battle between the UPA and the Soviet partisans took place in July 1943 north of Ternopil oblast, near the village of Teremne. A detachment led by Anton Odukha, which had arrived there in May 1943, launched sabotage activities to which the nationalists sought to put a stop. Initially, both sides held talks, but they failed to produce any results. After the Banderites had drawn up two UPA battalions (around 1,000 fighters)

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70  •  Stalin’s Commandos on 25 July 1943, during a skirmish with a Soviet patrol that eliminated the factor of surprise, the insurgents attacked a partisan encampment numbering 400 people (including the families of partisans). Ignat Kuzovkov, the commissar of the detachment, stated that the attacks were repeated every 20 minutes: “It was coming to the point of hand-to-hand combat. Despite the losses that our fighters were inflicting from concealed positions, they fought and fought, wishing to conclude the operation. It must be said that in all this time I have never seen such fetishism [probably “fanaticism”—A.G.] in combat. They fight better than the Germans.”152 Unable to take the camp by storm, the Banderites encircled it and began shelling it with mortars, which was not effective because the target area was quite large. The defenders continued firing with their small arms throughout the night. Maksym Skorupsky, a member of the UPA who took part in this operation, recalled: “The most beautiful picture of the nocturnal battle was the moment when compact fire opened up along the entire line, and the flickering of firing weapons could be seen in a semi-circle.”153 On the third day of the siege the Soviet partisans attempted a breakthrough, summarized here by Ignat Kuzovkov: “We had already redeployed to Slavuta raion [Kamianets-Podilsky, today the Khmelnytsky region—A.G.], while the nationalist power settled on the territory of the adjacent western districts [i.e. Ternopil oblast—A.G.].”154 Arguably, the nationalists’ most intense clash was against the large Chernihiv-Volyn unit led by Oleksii Fedorov, which entered Volyn oblast and laid siege to the Kovel railway junction. On 8 July 1943 Balytsky, the commander of the Stalin Detachment, who was operating at some distance from the unit’s main forces, sent Fedorov a radiogram with the following message: “On 6–7 July we forced a crossing of the river [Styr]; I crossed at 14:00 hours. The enemy hindered us. Beginning with the vil[lage] of Kulynovychi and to Matseika, we fought for most of the way. Twenty-six nationalists were killed … 12 rifles, 700 rou[nds] [and] one pistol were captured. The enemy is organizing ambushes in villages and forests … The situation is rotten, but the mood is cheerful.”155 That day Balytsky recorded a description of an uncustomary situation in his journal: “Right now the enemy is sitting in the forest, it knows it well, and it can strike the partisan, kill us from behind every bush … The German does not always go into the forest, [but] this scum is situated in the forest and in tiny hamlets, and for that reason the nationalistic gangs are far more dangerous than German punitive detachments.”156 The war in the forests was leading to confusion: exchanges of fire took place with small groups of the AK, whom the partisans took for Banderites, and even with nearby Soviet partisan detachments.157

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A Brief Overview of the History of Soviet Partisan Warfare in Ukraine  •  71 On 20 July Fedorov, who was relaying the UShPD’s instructions, sent Balytsky a telegram calling for definite restraint: “If they prevent you from carrying out the task, give them one in the teeth. Armed groups of nationalists [and] rank-and-file soldiers who fall into your hands are to be disarmed and sent to their homes; leaders are to be shot.”158 Two weeks after a number of battles had taken place the UPA temporarily blockaded an encampment of the Stalin Detachment. During a meeting of the command staff of his detachment Balytsky described the gravity of the situation: “The enemy is crafty, he creeps into the forest like a pig.”159 On 7 August Balytsky, who fought a number of battles against the UPA together with the Okhotniki (“Hunters”) Detachment of the NKGB USSR, spoke about the enemy in uncomplimentary terms: They are hindering us, partisans, in all sorts of ways—approaching a r[ail]w[ay], they organize ambushes against us everywhere, thereby not giving us a chance to approach the r[ail]w[ay], but we are burning with our weapons, our spirit, our will, and they can fuck off. Today, from the very morning until late at night we fought with that nationalistic scum. The nationalistic gang was firing the whole night from everywhere; it must be said that it is difficult to wage a battle in a forest, especially with that scum.160

The Stalin Detachment battled with the nationalists until late October 1943 without suspending its sabotage activities. In the fall of 1943, in connection with the approaching front, the intensity of the battles between the partisans and the insurgents rose sharply throughout the territory of Western Ukraine. In January 1944 Oleksii Fedorov informed the UShPD about the UPA’s activities: They organize ambushes, as a result of which hundreds of our finest partisans are killed … As a result of an ambush by the nationalists, the commissar of the Shchors Detachment, Comrade Pasenkov, [and] the dep[uty] com[mander] of the sabotage service of the Shchors Detachment, Comrade Valovy, were brutally killed … Together with similar kinds of activities, the nationalistic scum is also resorting to largescale military measures.161

The Soviet partisans’ war against the Ukrainian nationalists took place against the background of a much more savage, large-scale, and intensive war between two competing insurgencies: the UPA and the Armia Krajowa.

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72  •  Stalin’s Commandos The AK and the reds became allies during the very period when a separate inter-partisan war, triggered by the TsShPD’s instructions, was taking place in Western Belarus between the Soviets and the AK. It is likely that such “regional differences” were connected with the autonomy of the UShPD. Its leadership, recognizing the OUN’s influence, sought to prevent a confrontation from emerging between the communists and Polish nationalists. The fact is that the reds did not fight against the AK in Western Ukraine, but carried out joint operations162 against the UPA and the Germans. Whereas in the “Soviet” part of the Ukrainian SSR the population was trapped between a rock and a hard place—the communists and the Nazis—in Western Ukraine this same situation was exacerbated by two additional factors: the Ukrainian and Polish nationalists. Otaman Taras “Bulba” (Borovets) recalled the interactions among these four forces. Although in his memoirs the number of victims on the Ukrainian and Polish sides is distorted practically in inverse proportions, his description is quite striking. On the first night, the OUNites “punish a Polish village with fire and sword. In the daytime the Germans, together with the Polish police, punish five Ukrainian villages for this. On the second night, the Bolsheviks and the Poles burn down another five Ukrainian villages for this very same thing and kill off the surviving refugees in the forests.”163 In offering its assistance to the partisans, the AK provided an indispens­ able service to the UShPD forces in Western Ukraine and the Lublin area. One should not overlook the support provided to the Soviet partisans by the Polish population that was under the AK’s influence: the provision of guides and reconnaissance information, and, in a number of cases, Poles offered food, shelter for wounded partisans, and warnings about threats either from the Germans or the Banderites, etc. Furthermore, the close relations between these “sworn friends” led to Soviet partisan secret agents enacting a deep and mutual penetration of the AK, enabling the NKVD and NKGB to smash Polish nationalist structures in Western Ukraine in 1944–45. It was more difficult to fight against the OUN underground embedded in the Ukrainian population, despite the fact that various reliable sources, including the internal documentation of the AK and the Banderites, indicate the existence of pro-Soviet Ukrainians even in Galicia.164 One reason behind the apparently unanimous Western Ukrainian support for the UPA was revealed by Stepan Oleksenko, the head of the KamianetsPodilsky Staff of the Partisan Movement: [If] upon their arrival in the villages of Western Ukraine the partisans ask about active nationalists, the inhabitants do not say anything …

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A Brief Overview of the History of Soviet Partisan Warfare in Ukraine  •  73 Some of them are nationalists themselves, while others are afraid of their neighbors … If any of the residents are observed having conversations with the partisans, then upon the partisans’ departure from the village these residents were killed by their own neighbors-nationalists.165

In Soviet Ukraine, the nationalists were in a much more difficult position than in their “own” area, that is, the one covered by the OUN network. In his journal Mikhail Naumov described the UPA in the Zhytomyr region as an insignificant force: The Banderites appeared in these forests even before we did. There are app[roximately] 150 of them. They live only in forests. They do not conduct any operations … They are dirty and louse-ridden, hungry … When the Banderites want to eat, they come into a village and collect pieces of bread, onions, garlic, and place all this in a bag hung on their backs—they want to show what apostles of the Ukrainian people they are, but the old Petliurites … love to eat meat too. Therefore, at night a group of those old men sneak into a village and in the first house they steal … a cow … The local people do not understand them … Near NovhorodVolynsky a Banderite detachment has forcibly mobilized 26 collective farmers, whom they are using for manual labor under strict supervision; at night they tie them up. One of them managed to go over to us. He recounted all these people are preparing to desert to the red partisans … The Banderites found out about their intentions and decided to strangle them all. One of our scouts, Moroz, fell into their claws. We soon found his corpse with the head cut off. They are hunting for our submachine guns … They are shadowing us all the time and staying close. They need this in order to use our force as a screen from the Germans. However, it must be admitted that they are engaged in serious propaganda.166

The OUN and UPA’s attempts to organize a network on the territory of Soviet Ukraine frequently led to their penetration of the Soviet secret services, although both sides, with the aid of counterintelligence measures, neutralized each other’s secret-agent games.167 A striking example of this is cited in a report written by “Borys,” a military commander of the UPA from the northern part of Rivne oblast: On 22 August 1943 a fighting group of the SB [Security Service] in subraion “no. 5” liquidated 14 peasants—communists … The consequence of this was: that same day, at 12:00 at night, a Soviet gang surrounded those buildings in which our fighting group was located;

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74  •  Stalin’s Commandos of them [members of the SB OUN or the UPA—A.G.] one was killed and one was seriously wounded. That same night they killed the kushch leader “Strela”; his house was burned down and he was thrown into the fire. On 23 August the communists killed the stanytsia leader of the SB in the village of Metkiv.168

Insurgent commanders, who sought to expand their influence to the east, also accepted Soviet Ukrainians into the ranks of the UPA, particularly former Red Army soldiers who possessed knowledge of the military arts. But mistrust toward Soviet people lingered. A survey written by an OUN underground member from the southern part of Volyn oblast reported on the effect of such attitudes: “On territory V Captain ‘Vyshnia’ launched communist activity in his company and shot all the easterners who were part of his company. He also shot easterners-deserters whom he had taken from other detachments.”169 This kind of “selection” was also carried out among the civilian population.170 In the fall of 1943, during a confrontation between the reds and the UPA in north-western Ukraine, Polissia, and Volyn, the two sides divided up the region, with the exception of larger settled areas.171 Describing the situation as of January 1944, Petro Vershyhora reported: All of Polissia, with the exception of large communications … was completely free of Germans; the huge territory from the Sarny to the Buh was divided between the UPA and large units of Soviet partisans pushed out from beyond the Horyn … The western bank of the Horyn River, the districts of Stydyn, Stepan, Dombrovytsia, the Kilky-Rafalivka district were in the hands of the UPA, behind them up to Stokhid are the Soviet partisans, and from the Stokhid River to the west are entirely nationalistic districts of the UPA, not even reconnoitered by the partisans—a kind of blank spot on the map of Polissia.172

The UShPD resolved to occupy these “blank spots,” once again ordering its detachments to head for Western Ukraine. In early 1944 there were up to 27,000 partisans of the UShPD on the territory of Volyn alone, as well as in adjacent districts of central Ukraine,173 not including detachments of the NKGB and army intelligence. At this time UPA forces numbered around 15,000 fighters. However, the Banderites succeeded in wrecking the UShPD’s plan for the first six months of 1944, and they did so without engaging in any large-scale, protracted battles or routing a single large unit, for which their forces were inadequate.

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A Brief Overview of the History of Soviet Partisan Warfare in Ukraine  •  75 The Ukrainian nationalists, taking advantage of their knowledge of local areas, well-established intelligence network, and system of notification, destroyed small partisan groups engaged in sabotage, procurement, and reconnaissance, or hindered their efforts by carrying out ambushes against them.174 Hryhorii Balytsky, the commander of the Stalin Detachment, called one of his efforts to obtain food supplies an “economic-combat” operation.175 This was attested to by the staff of the large 24th Anniversary of the RKKA unit, after it spent two months in Volyn and Lviv oblasts: “The population, sympathizing with the nationalists, provided practically no assistance to large partisan units and detachments passing through … From 3 May 1944 the personnel composition of the large unit ate exceptionally badly, and for 2.5 months it barely saw any bread.”176 In 1943–44 Polish and Ukrainian nationalists, who were fighting on opposing sides of the military and political conflict, developed various political priorities as well as noxious chauvinism. While the AK concluded a tactical alliance with the Soviet communists, the UPA in early 1944 suspended its activities on the anti-German front and concluded a number of tactical arrangements with the Wehrmacht, seeking to obtain weapons for the impending encounter with the NKVD and to exploit the Germans in its struggle against the Soviet partisans. On 18 March 1944 a leading OUN official in Galicia sent his sub­ordinates an important instruction to be followed in the event of the arrival of the red partisans. It noted the need to increase the vigilance of observation posts throughout villages; in the event of a partisan attack on a village, to hide residents and their property inside bunkers; to conduct propaganda among the Bolsheviks with the aid of leaflets; and to disarm and liquidate small detachments cautiously and secretly. The instruction also recommended that cases of the Poles’ collaboration with the Germans be reported to the partisans and, in particular, that examples of the Poles’ assistance to the Germans in the destruction of partisans and communists should be shown. In other words, the nationalists were exhorted to poison relations between the Poles and the Soviets. The Banderites were ordered to disorientate Bolshevik detachments to the extent of trying to provoke battles between one red detachment and another, convincing one that the other was a UPA detachment, for example. It goes without saying that the instruction contained an order to send the Soviets against German units, informing the occupiers of this beforehand. The dry instruction ended with this emotionally tinged emphasis: “Destroy that Bolsh[evik] scum by all possible means.”177 Apart from the struggle against incoming detachments and large units, in 1943–44 the OUN and the UPA in Western Ukraine destroyed

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76  •  Stalin’s Commandos everyone who was parachuted in by the Soviet side, without distinction as to department or mission.178 Data collected by Germany military intelligence, dated 16 August 1944, states: “In recent times the UPA neutralized presumably 1,500 parachutists in the Carpathians.”179 The historian Anatolii Kentii held a rather high opinion of the nationalists’ combat activities: “Beginning in the spring of 1944 the UPA and underground structures of the OUN … through their fighting in the rear of the Red Army and against Soviet partisans saved the forces of the German army in Eastern Galicia from being utterly routed.”180 In concluding the description of the reds’ struggle against the Ukrainian nationalists, it is worth emphasizing that in the psychological struggle of the two sides neither the insurgents nor the partisans achieved any palpable successes.181 An insurgent intelligence report about Shukaev’s unit notes the Soviet partisans’ aversion to the Ukrainian Insurgent Army: “Our slogans were welcomed in Volyn and Podillia, however they are not believed because the UPA is terrifying to them, considering the slaughter [of the Poles] that [it] carried out in the villages of Volyn, where the major proportion of these partisans were situated after or during that time.”182 In the war between the communists and nationalists in Western Ukraine there were neither victors nor vanquished, although both sides inflicted massive blows on each other. In terms of losses, we are talking about thousands of fighters who were killed on both sides.183 In a number of cases, the intensity of the Soviet formations’ actions against the OUN and the UPA surpassed that of anti-German actions.184 The UPA’s losses were likely somewhat lower than those suffered by Soviet partisan detachments. For the most part, the Banderites carried out ambushes, using the element of surprise and numerical superiority, in advantageous situations at the right time. But the partisans did not “lag behind” them: the forest soldiers reported to the Soviet security organs all data that were collected on collaborators and members of the OUN and the UPA.185 The war between the reds and the OUN–UPA in 1943–44 was somewhat reminiscent of the battle in Ukraine in 1918–20. Along with the superficial similarity, however, there were some essential differences. First of all, the meaning of the conflict had changed: at one time Ukrainian democrats were fighting against the rising might of young Bolshevik despotism. During World War II the formations of a totalitarian party, the OUN, fought against the Stalinist totalitarian machine. Secondly, the forms of conflict were different: whereas regular state units fought on the fronts on behalf of the Ukrainian People Republic (UNR) and the communist regime, during the Soviet–German war the Soviet partisans clashed with

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A Brief Overview of the History of Soviet Partisan Warfare in Ukraine  •  77 the Ukrainian insurgents on German-occupied territories. Thirdly, the scale of events had markedly changed. The army of the UNR had fought throughout Ukraine, while the activities of the OUN had a peripheral character. This allowed the Galician collaborator Volodymyr Kubijovič to assign the UPA’s struggle a place on the margins of history: In this struggle [of the USSR against the Third Reich] we [Ukrainians] were only an object. We not only suffered heavy human losses, not only did not have extracted freedom, but, with the exception of secondary episodes, we did not have the power to lead a struggle against the occupiers in the right way. The history of Ukraine in 1917–1921 was bloody and golden; in 1941–1945 it was bloody and grey.186

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3 The Main Directions of Red Partisan Activities The Destruction of Economic Targets Stalin made the announcement about adopting the scorched-earth tactic on 3 July 1941: Create partisan detachments … for blowing up bridges, roads, damaging telegraphic and telephone communications, burning forests, warehouses, and transport units … During forced departures of Red Army units, do not leave the enemy a single kilogram of bread … Disperse all livestock, surrender grain for safekeeping to state organs for its transportation to rear line districts; grain and fuel that cannot be shipped out should be destroyed.1

Even the saboteur Ilya Starinov thought that this appeal was excessively harsh: “If Stalin’s demand had been carried out, nearly the entire population of Ukraine’s left-bank regions and the occupied territories of Russia would have perished during the occupation.”2 Nonetheless, the directive to destroy the Wehrmacht’s rear and to burn forests was repeated in the resolution adopted by the State Defense Committee on 10 July 1941 for the commanders of districts, fronts, and armies.3 The order concerning the burning of forests was soon retransmitted by subordinate bodies, including in Ukraine. On 21 July 1941 the head of security for the military rear of the South-western Front pointed out that one of the missions of subversive groups was “to burn down forested tracts adjacent to the enemy’s communication lines and grain fields.”4 Meanwhile, German documents do not mention that the red partisans were destroying their own natural hiding places en masse. On 22 July 1941 the State Defense Committee issued the following directive to all party organs—destroy all sowings of technical crops and transfer 1.5–2 hectares for farming from state grain and potato crops to the remaining members of collective farms: “Destroy the entire remaining

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The Main Directions of Red Partisan Activities  •  79 part of sown grain and potato crops by mowing it in its unripened state for fodder for the Red Army’s needs, the feeding of and trampling by livestock, burning, and the like.”5 The German security services reported that in Zhytomyr oblast these orders were carried out to the fullest extent possible: “The population from which the Russians confiscated or destroyed the most indispensable harvesting machines is in a helpless situation.”6 Newly created partisan and sabotage detachments from various departments were also used to carry out such tasks.7 The invaders noted the same situation in cities,8 which was confirmed by NKVD reports sent to Khrushchev in late 1941: saboteurs were blowing up water supplies, electrical stations, and bakeries.9 The most well-known incident in this respect was the destruction of downtown Kyiv, despite the fact that the Germans were prepared for such an event prior to entering the city, and in a number of cases they had warned residents about the mining of one building or another.10 However, in one notable example, after German sappers inspected the Continental Hotel, the rear-line services of the 6th Army set up their billets there – suffering losses when a series of explosions occurred on 23 September. The debris from nearby houses was hurled into the air and buildings burst into flames in various areas, and the German sappers were powerless to locate the explosives and avert officer deaths.11 On 24 September buildings on Khreshchatyk Boulevard began to explode, and the entire main street of Kyiv was gradually reduced to a pile of rubble. In order to confine the fire that hot September day, the Germans began to blow up buildings themselves on nearby streets.12 For a long time it was believed that Kyiv was mined exclusively by NKVD personnel. However, a note about the defense of Kyiv in 1941 written by Major M. Chukarev, the former head of the engineering service at the Kyiv defense headquarters, clearly indicates that Kyiv was blown up by his subordinates, that is, Red Army troops: “Hundreds of mines were detonated after German army units arrived in the city of Kyiv. Walls and entire buildings collapsed onto the heads of the German-fascist invaders.”13 In the continuing debate14 on the question of who blew up the ancient Dormition Cathedral of the Kyivan Cave Monastery, the most reliable material is still an internal German document of the SD: President [of Slovakia] Tiso visited Kyiv on 3 November 1941 and paid a visit to the monastery cathedral … A few minutes before two-thirty there was a small explosion inside the cathedral building. One of the police security guards standing nearby saw three fleeing figures; they were shot. A few minutes later there was a loud blast inside the cathedral building,

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80  •  Stalin’s Commandos which utterly destroyed the cathedral building. In all likelihood, a large quantity of explosive material had been laid earlier. That the explosions did not take place earlier was due only to the fact that the entire building [of the monastery complex] was carefully cordoned off and guarded. Obviously, this was an attempt on the life of President Tiso. The three alleged perpetrators cannot be identified.15

The theory about the NKVD’s complicity16 is not borne out by documents. The theory that the Kyivan Cave Monastery was blown up by Red Army specialists cannot be ruled out. Furthermore, the hypothesis that Dormition Cathedral was blown up by the German occupiers17 should not be rejected out of hand. Partisan activities were filtering into rural areas, but even there the partisans were assigned to carry out rather large-scale missions, partially in keeping with an order issued by the headquarters of the Supreme Command on 17 November 1941: Destroy and burn to the ground all populated points in the rear of the German armies at a distance of 40–60 km into the heart from the front edge and 20–30 km to the right and left of roads … Make wide use of … commands of reconnoiters/intelligence agents, skiers, and partisan subversive groups equipped with Molotov cocktails, grenades, explosive devices.18

The partisans made several attempts to carry out these directives. For example, as Soviet army services reported, on 2 December 1941 in the northern part of Stalino (modern-day Donetsk) oblast a group of partisans from a detachment led by Karnaukhov “raided the village of Malky, where it burned down 10 houses where Germans were staying.”19 According to the NKVD’s intelligence, this same detachment also burned down 40 houses in the village of Pryshyb and 80 houses in the village of Sydorove “in which German soldiers were billeted.”20 Futhermore, an All-Union communiqué reports that, as of early March 1942, the partisans of the Ukrainian SSR had destroyed 295 residential buildings.21 In early 1942 the column heading “Villages Destroyed” appeared in the reporting documents of the NKVD USSR concerning partisan activities. According to one of these reports, by March 1942 the partisans had burned down 15 villages in the Karelo-Finnish SSR and 27 in the occupied part of Russia.22 In Ukraine there were fewer forests and partisans, but the partisans carried out their mission to the best of their abilities. In connection with this, the Deputy People’s Commissar of Internal Affairs of the Ukrainian

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The Main Directions of Red Partisan Activities  •  81 SSR reported the following to the CC CP(B)U: “On 16.5.42 the commander of a partisan detachment, Saburov, sent a wireless message [saying] that on 11.5.42 the artillery of his detachment fired on the Germans’ location in the raion center of Seredyna-Buda, Sumy oblast. Direct hits on the houses where the Germans were stationed were noted.”23 It is not difficult to imagine that the local population were also hit by the remaining shells. According to the Germans’ information, the Soviets’ scorched-earth tactic was a priority of the partisan struggle in Ukraine. This was the specific topic of an SD communiqué dated 25 September 1942: “In keeping with the Soviets’ instructions, gang activity is aimed in two directions: 1) The destruction of the harvest, the destruction of reserves and sowing material, [and] harvesting and other machines important for sustenance; 2) Acts of sabotage of communications.”24 General information appears in an SS report from a number of occupied territories of the USSR, including Ukraine, covering the period from August to November 1942: 113 estates, 30 sawmills and forest areas, 35 industrial enterprises, and 110 “other valuables,” all destroyed. At the same time, 262 subversive activities were recorded on railways, 54 on bridges, 54 on communication lines, and 40 “others.”25 In terms of the total number of subversive actions, even though the number of actions reflecting the scorched-earth tactic (288) was nearly one and a half times smaller than the number of subversive actions targeting communications (410), the first figure reflects the destruction of valuable installations, while the second represents destroyed and damaged installations that could be restored to operation—some very easily, for example the railway network. According to German intelligence, the scope of destroyed economic targets was expanding gradually. A secret-police group of the Wehrmacht stationed in the northern part of Sumy oblast reported about the activities of several detachments totaling approximately 1,000 men, which were launching attacks from the Khinel woods: To the present time, in the vicinities of Hlukhiv, Esman, and Shalyhyne bandits have robbed or destroyed: 3,044 tsentners of grain, 1,162 head of large, horned cattle, 808 sheep, 1,245 wagons, 1,060 horses, 730 pigs, 519 beehives, 264 harnesses. One hundred and fifteen homes have been destroyed or burned. It is altogether impossible to determine the number of looted domestic fowl.26

The escalation of sabotage on the part of Soviet partisans was noted both by their allies and themselves. In a report written in December 1942 a Polish underground member from Ukraine’s Polissia region describes the

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82  •  Stalin’s Commandos reds’ operations as actions aimed at destroying the economy: “A few acts of sabotage on railways, attacks on estates, the burning of crops, and disruption of the forestry service … They disrupted economic life to a significant degree.”27 Documents produced by Soviet detachments, including those led by Kovpak, Saburov, and Fedorov,28 attest to the devastation of agriculture, especially farming equipment, as well as light industry. In addition, a partisan-based secret-agent network operated even at functioning enterprises, a fact that was mentioned in the spring of 1943 by Porfirii Kumaniok, secretary of the underground Sumy oblast party committee: “It would be good to send our man to the stable as a senior stableman and through him to assign tasks concerning the dispatching of livestock … These people put livestock out of commission; they maimed horses, underfed livestock, and the like.”29 From 1943 onwards the Soviet commandos’ priority was to sabotage communications, yet economic sabotage remained a daily feature of the occupation. Railways, military depots, and headquarters were guarded assiduously by the Germans, but it was impossible to maintain police supervision at dozens of economic targets, which is why their destruction was a comparatively easy form of sabotage. For example, a detachment of demolitionists, even one that had been sent to destroy trains specifically, had the opportunity, even after failing to carry out a mission, to “smooth things over” with their superiors by burning hayricks and barns filled with grain on the way back to their base, shooting from inside a forest at a herd of pigs, or tossing a grenade at a tractor, mowing machine, or milling stones. Furthermore, partisans operating in villages not under their control sought to destroy all large buildings, such as schools, hospitals, and dormitories, in order to prevent the police or the Germans from using them to billet any number of large units and subunits.30 German intelligence reported that throughout July 1943, 19 acts of sabotage on railways, five on communications lines, and 35 “other”31 acts of sabotage took place in the rear zone of Army Group South. According to information from official reports—which was being supplied by an operational directorate of the UShPD—albeit allowing for exaggeration, Ukrainian partisans destroyed 402 industrial enterprises, 59 electric power stations, 42 pumping stations, 1,117 separator stations, 915 storehouses,32 1,444 tractors, 2,231 other farming machines, 5,422 wagons, 153 engines, and 5,280 horses.33 This report did not include a huge number of schools, stables and pigsties, mills, village clubs and individual residential structures, postal and command buildings, pigs, sheep, large horned cattle, fowl, hayricks, and stacks of grain, etc. That part of the devastation was recorded in documents prepared by the occupation administration.34

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The Main Directions of Red Partisan Activities  •  83 The impact of the activities of Soviet special units tasked with destroying the economy of the German rear was so colossal that in all likelihood it surpas­ sed the effects of combat operations and attacks on railways and highways.

Combat Activities and Sabotage of Communications Initially, the Soviet leadership regarded the partisans not as primarily sabotage units but as combat units of the Red Army operating in the Wehrmacht’s rear. Among other things, the Soviet commandos were ordered to attack both headquarters and military units. In the view of the saboteur Ilya Starinov, this was a mistake on the part of Stalin, who was guided by the experience of the Civil War, when “partisans … enjoyed greater maneuverability than their opponents. Prior to an attack on enemy garrisons, the partisans, disrupting wire communication, seemed to isolate them from the external world, and subjected to attack, they could not obtain support.”35 During the Soviet–German war, conditions changed thanks to the fact that troops were generously equipped with motorcycles, automobiles, and trucks, and to the development of radio communication: “During open (especially protracted) battles, partisan casualties were higher than the enemy’s. For the partisans, an open clash is the most inconvenient type of activity.”36 This was one of the reasons behind the crushing defeats suffered during the first year of the war. The second reason for the heavy defeats was that the Germans stepped up the involvement of formations created out of Soviet citizens, including police. In their sober assessments, the UShPD specialists, utilizing a specific departmental lexicon, confirmed the objective rule that in practically any mass military organization ideologically motivated fighters constituted a minority: All the traitors found in the Germans’ service may be divided into two categories. The first category, the most insignificant but exceptionally harmful, [consists of] traitors who went to serve the Germans completely voluntarily out of hatred for the Soviet order. The second category, representing a particularly large majority, [consists] of people who served the Germans out of cowardice, loss of faith in the victory of the Red Army, out of a desire to save themselves from being sent to Germany.37

Research by the historian Ivan Dereiko also confirms the traditional Soviet description of the majority of the “traitors” as self-seekers and conformists.

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84  •  Stalin’s Commandos The immediate motives of policemen were usually a comparatively high wage and privileges, especially the possibility, as far as the granting of lands was concerned, to obtain some kind of authority.38 Therefore, collaborationist formations comprised so-called active Soviet party or Komsomol members and state servants (partsovaktiv). Dereiko’s book is based on an analysis of the personnel records of 311 policemen, which reveals that, on average, those “natural servants of the regime” constituted one-third of the personnel of Ukrainian guard battalions. Perhaps nothing symbolizes the Soviet cadre composition of the collaborationist police more than the milestones in the life of Semyon Bliumenshtein, a native of Stanyslaviv (modern-day Ivano-Frankivsk), who took the surname Baranovsky in 1919. In the 1920s he occupied leading positions in the gubernial Cheka in the city of Vinnytsia and in the Mohyliv-Podilsky raion directorate of the Cheka, the original Soviet secret police. In his autobiography this Soviet careerist wrote about his “work”: “By nature I was, and remain, cruel to enemies of the people. I have personally shot hundreds of c[ounter]-r[evolutionaries].”39 In the early 1930s he served as the deputy head of the Main Directorate of the NKVD in the Georgian SSR and later in the Tajik SSR. In 1941, having concealed his Jewish ethnicity and experience in the punitive Soviet organs, Baranovsky was appointed the head of police in Krasnopillia raion, Sumy oblast. In 1944, having likewise hidden the details of his activities during the German occupation, this former policeman became the head of the “Zadnestrovtsy,” a terrorist group of the Ukrainian NKVD, with the members of which he traversed all of Western Ukraine in the Wehrmacht’s rear, all the way to south-eastern Poland. Later, information came to light about Baranovsky’s involvement in the execution of hostages in 1942–43, the torture of suspects, and his subordinates’ participation in the killings of partisans and their civilian associates. On 13 February 1945 Baranovsky, now under investigation, stated: “I personally shot [a resident of the village of Mezenivka] Hodovannyk,”40 a Soviet activist. In August 1945 Bliumenshtein-Baranovsky was executed. The local police played a decisive role in the anti-partisan struggle. For example, according to a German field-command report prepared in the spring of 1942, the inhabitants of north-western Ukraine promptly provided information about enemy actions: “In the districts of Koriukivka and Kholmy, which are at particular risk, many men have voluntarily joined the struggle against the partisans or gone into the guard service. On the other hand, fear of the partisans is strong because of the terror being carried out by them.”41 Oleksii Fedorov, commander of the Chernihiv unit, had a high opinion of the importance of collaborators:

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The Main Directions of Red Partisan Activities  •  85 If not for the police scum, it would have been 10 times easier for the partisans to wage a struggle against the German occupiers, keeping in mind that they [the policemen] know the area, the forests, all sorts of boondocks, [and] locations of partisan detachments, and it is only thanks to the active participation of police personnel (kulaks, criminals, individuals who were repressed for various political reasons) that German units and expeditionary-punitive detachments occasionally enjoy some success.42

In a speech delivered during a meeting of partisan leaders on 13 November 1942, the first secretary of the Chernihiv oblast party committee expressed himself with greater conviction: “The main force that we are encountering in Ukraine is the police.”43 This is corroborated by statistical data. From mid-1942 the Nazis, having depleted Germany’s human resources, began to create, in addition to the local police, much larger formations consisting of Soviet citizens who were slated for battalions, and—from 1943 onwards—for divisions. According to a report prepared by Himmler on 10 May 1943, in the occupied territories of the USSR the ratio of Germans to local residents in police structures and the SS was 1:11.44 At issue here were the 27,543 individuals who worked in the regular police (Ordnungspolizei, literally “order police”) and the security police, on the one hand—and on the other the 50,000 people who served in the “eastern battalions” and the 250,000 people who were employed as local policemen on “individual service.” However, it should be kept in mind that even Wehrmacht units, the majority of which consisted of Germans, fought against the partisans. Meanwhile, according to the partisans’ dispatches, the ratio of killed Germans to collaborators was approximately 10:1,45 although in their reports to the Center the partisans constantly distorted not only absolute figures but also these ratios. After all, the leadership behind the front lines ordered the partisans first and foremost to fight the Germans. Even though German documents are incomplete (particularly with regard to recording casualties among the “subhuman beings”), they paint a different picture.46 For example, in an SS report on the struggle against the partisans in a number of occupied Soviet territories (including Ukraine) covering the period from August to November 1942, the column entitled “Our Losses” records that the German order police and the SS security police lost 174 men (killed), 132 were wounded, and 13 disappeared without a trace. Among guard teams consisting of Soviet citizens, 205 were killed, 127 wounded, and 133 disappeared without a trace.47 To summarize, the ratio of German to collaborators’ losses was 1:1.5 (319 and 465, respectively).

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86  •  Stalin’s Commandos Local police units successfully fought against small partisan groups, especially in 1941–42.48 However, a small group of rural policemen was powerless against detachments numbering between 100 and 1,000 men. Whenever a large partisan group appeared, policemen preferred to save themselves by fleeing. Therefore, by the beginning of 1942, and increasingly in late 1942 to early 1943, the Germans began merging the police forces of several villages into a single group. Whenever a partisan detachment appeared, policemen assembled in a raion center or a larger village, where in a number of cases they could hold the line. For example, after the Sumy and Chernihiv units carried out a raid into north-eastern Ukraine in the summer of 1942, SS officers came to the following conclusion: Gangs are engaging in combat with German troops only if they have no other way out, when they [the Germans—A.G.] attack them or obstruct their usual route. The Ukrainian militia, too, does not run the risk of attack if it appears in large groups … Hungarian units of any force risk attacks by gangs, and until the present time nearly all encounters with Hungarians have ended with the gangs’ success.49

From Kovpak’s large unit, which was stationed on the right bank of the Dnipro River in the spring of 1943, the CC CP(B)U representative Ivan Syromolotny, in the wake of a number of exhausting battles, sent a message to the UShPD in which he drew attention to the enemy’s motivations: These Germans are impatient swine. They are always walking right behind [us] […] Somebody has now reported that they are attacking with two groups from two directions. They all want to surround [us] […] To make matters worse, we have the shitty police and Cossacks, fuck their mothers. They don’t know how to fight, they’re dropping like flies, but they give us no peace, the whores.50

In late May 1943 Kovpak reported on the immediate battle period, indicating the high level of skill of some collaborators: “During May 1943 … the policemen with whom we were fighting fight better than the Germans. Our fighters do not take them prisoner but kill them. Most Cossack units are not bellicosely inclined, and at the first opportunity they go over to the partisans.”51 From November 1942 the partisans began trying to recruit the police to their own ranks or to facilitate the simple collapse of battalions and regiments. A special TsShPD instruction recommended strengthening reconnaissance and secret-agent development of collaborationist units and

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The Main Directions of Red Partisan Activities  •  87 propaganda against them. With the aid of provocative activity, the partisana were ordered to direct the Germans’ repressions against the collaborationist command personnel who were loyal to the occupiers, and expose and kill the “hostile element” among all the “turncoats.”52 By the summer of 1943 the instability of the “eastern troops” was sparking concern among the rear-line structures of the Wehrmacht in Ukraine: It is urgently necessary to strengthen the condition of local units … The total number of those found in the area of responsibility [of Army Group South], in subunits subordinated and not subordinated [to the Wehrmacht’s rear-line structures], equipped Eastern formations and volunteers is 80,000, bearing arms. Of them, the Cossacks and Turkic nationalities are fighting out of conviction to a significant degree. The predominant number of the remainder wants security in the form of food, clothing, and exemption from being sent to work in Germany.53

Such conditions made it easy for the partisans to demoralize these formations.54 The situation reached the point where entire Soviet partisan detachments consisted mainly of “two-time traitors.”55 In spring 1943 the writer Mykola Sheremet, who had spent a considerable period of time in Oleksii Fedorov’s unit, described the former collaborators as able fighters: “A significant proportion of the turncoats proved themselves model partisans and they already have decorations.”56 It is clear that they had received training in the military arts during their service with the Germans. Nevertheless, despite the general military and political situation, the collaborationist formations remained a significant—and even principal— enemy of the partisans in 1943–44 as well.57 Unfortunately, no detailed document describing the results of the combat actions between the partisans and the Germans in late 1944 was ever recorded. On the other hand, even the fragmentary information cited above indicates the merely modest achievements of the forest soldiers. During the archival research for this book, German documents created by both civilian or military administration in Ukraine, including summaries covering a period of several months, did not produce any figure close to indicating that up to 1,000 men were killed by the partisans. As a rule, losses inflicted by the forest soldiers are in the dozens, occasionally in the hundreds. Taking into consideration the research already done,58 a new assessment is offered here. It appears that between 1941 and 1944 partisans attached to the NKVD of the Ukrainian SSR and the UShPD killed in battle

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88  •  Stalin’s Commandos approximately 10,000 Germans, their allies, and collaborators (on the whole, the combat activities of detachments of the GRU and NKVD USSR were insignificant). Between one-half and two-thirds of this number were citizens of the USSR, primarily Ukrainians. A number approximately the same or somewhat larger were wounded in battles that took place against Soviet Ukrainian partisans. To this number one should add the 3,000 members of the OUN and the UPA who were killed and wounded in battle. According to an operational report prepared by the UShPD, 264,000 “enemy soldiers and officers, policemen, and traitors of the motherland”59 were killed and wounded as a result of the reds’ combat activities in Ukraine, and this number does not include fatalities resulting from sabotage. At the same time, the Soviet Ukrainian partisans, compared to the partisans of Russia and Belarus, were known for their mobility and maneuverability. This was connected with the leadership’s (Tymofii Strokach’s) relatively high professionalism and the very landscape of Ukraine, with its wealth of steppe lands and forest-steppes. It is entirely likely that a certain role was also played by Ukrainian military traditions, which penetrated “outward”, even through the façade of the Stalinist regime. The partisan formations that survived 1941 were created in north-eastern Ukraine; however, in 1944 the majority of the UShPD forces encountered the Red Army in Ukraine’s western oblasts or even in Poland and Slovakia. For example, in 1941–44 Kovpak’s unit (it became a division in 1944) covered 7,500 km; during the war years Mikhail Naumov’s large cavalry unit covered 9,000 km,60 the equivalent of the distance between Berlin and Pyongyang. It is easy to concur with the words of an eyewitness to these events, the writer Mykola Sheremet: “Inactive existence is a mortal threat to partisans; it gives rise to carelessness, indecisiveness, it leads to everyday demoralization and repulses the population. The life of the partisans resides only in movement, in active operations against the enemy.”61 *** From around mid-1942 until the conclusion of the war the importance of the combat activities of UShPD formations was downgraded. Orders began arriving from the front to avoid open clashes with large enemy units. In late 1942 to early 1943 sabotage on railroads became a priority. According to UShPD data, whereas in June 1942 Soviet Ukrainian partisans blew up 22 special trains, in April 1943 they destroyed 116.62 Beginning in the summer of 1943, Ukrainian detachments and large units consolidated their grip on railway sectors. According to the memoirs of Wilhelm Keitel, head of the Supreme Command of the Armed Forces (Oberkommando der Wehrmacht), the German army experienced supply difficulties along the entire Eastern Front:

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The Main Directions of Red Partisan Activities  •  89 The land army’s (without the Luftwaffe) round-the-clock need for delivered rations comprised 120 trains; during increased combat activities, when the need for delivered ammunition increased and the necessity to dispatch wounded to the rear arose, the number of freight trains increased significantly; up to 100 trains were dispatched daily to the front, but not always, if you consider that the partisans sometimes set off up to 100 blasts on the railway network in a single night.63

The point here is not about blowing up trains but about the destruction of rails that the Germans were able to repair quickly.64 According to UShPD data, Ukrainian partisans carried out 5,000 successful sabotage attacks on trains (destroying 50,000 cars, platforms, and water towers), during the course of which 200,000 “enemy soldiers and officers, policemen, and traitors of the motherland” were killed and wounded.65 It turns out that the partisans destroyed an average of ten cars in a single train and killed and wounded 40 men per attack. However, troop trains and trains loaded with equipment constituted an insignificant proportion of Wehrmacht shipments. For the most part, railways were used to transport food, building materials, ammunition, forage, war materiel, weapons, medical supplies, fuels and lubricants, etc. One should not overlook the significant numbers of civilian shipments, including those containing agricultural products, raw materials, and equipment. Moreover, damaging a locomotive did not always result in the crash of even a single train car, let alone the entire train; even the crash of a passenger train did not always lead to fatalities. For example, an antipersonnel mine is not enough to destroy a locomotive, a vehicle that weighs dozens of tons. Kovpak recalled that in late 1942 to early 1943 the Sumy unit in Polissia encountered Belarusian partisans … They recounted … that they had derailed hundreds of trains; I posed the question: “How much tolite do you load inside a charge in order to blow up a train?” They replied: “4 kilograms.” Our reply to them was the following: “Permit us not to believe you … [Here are] The facts: we have covered many hundreds of kilometers … and nowhere did we discover a single train or encounter even a single wheel …” We categorically refuted [their statement] that 4 kg could render a train inoperable, since this is unthinkable in cold weather. We had verified this … In order not to throw dust into the eyes of the leading agencies, we advised them to load 8 kilograms in a charge, not 4 kilograms.66

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90  •  Stalin’s Commandos At the same time, many attempts at subversion failed. For example, according to German information, in June 1932, in the Reichskomissariat Ukraine, “160 bombings were prevented because either the explosives were found or the saboteur groups were driven off.”67 For example, in the Chernihiv area, in Ivan Bovkun’s large unit, according to veteran Lev Ayzen, explosives used against trains frequently did not detonate because of technical problems: “the charges were primitive.”68 The results of the partisans’ railway sabotage are illustrated by reports generated by the various occupation administrative structures; as a rule, they mention totally victimless train crashes and, occasionally, some injured people and fewer than ten killed during such an incident.69 A communiqué sent from Right-Bank Ukraine lists the “most important attacks” that were carried out in the Generalkommissariat Zhitomir in September–October 1942:70 nine attacks caused the deaths of 28 people, that is, an average of three people were killed during the course of a single act of sabotage. However, it is also important to note that acts of sabotage slowed down rail capacity; it was crucial to repair the damage as quickly as possible. Furthermore, beginning in the spring of 1943, railway drivers reduced train speeds in order to minimize damage resulting from explosions. The Germans were thus somewhat successful in reducing the number of accident victims.71 Even the destruction of passenger trains did not result in very many casualties: in one incident that took place in 1944, seven people were killed.72 The most destructive instance of railway sabotage relating to Ukraine, which was found during the research for this book in German archives, took place in March 1944: “Twenty-seven km west of Zhmerynka 1 hospital train drove over a mine. 59 killed, 200 wounded.”73 This extraordinary incident made it into the weekly report of the Supreme Command of the Wehrmacht about partisan operations in the entire territory of the USSR. The most reliable source for statistics is the research done by the former head of the Wehrmacht’s transportation service, Hans Pottgiesser. According to his data, in 1942–43 partisans operating across the whole of the USSR damaged approximately 6,400 steam locomotives and damaged or destroyed up to 20,000 train cars.74 Information about the first half of 1944 is missing from this study. If we take the average monthly figures for 1943 to arrive at the figures for the first half of 1944, it would appear that between 1942 and 1944 saboteurs from all departments operating across the entire occupied territory of the USSR damaged or destroyed around 9,000 locomotives. According to TsShPD data, which have been widely studied, the partisans wrecked more than 20,000 trains,75 a number that

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The Main Directions of Red Partisan Activities  •  91 is 2.2 times higher than our estimate. If we superimpose this ratio onto the UShPD’s data, the result is approximately 2,300 steam locomotives blown up on the territory of Ukraine in 1941–44. Since this figure is not a computation but an extrapolation, one should not insist on its accuracy. The damage to rolling stock was a palpable blow to the Wehrmacht’s rear, while personnel losses were comparatively small. According to Pottgiesser, in the sphere of the Minsk Imperial Directorate of Communications responsible for Belarus, between 1942 and 31 March 1944, during the course of partisan attacks on railways 158 German railway workers and 1,073 soldiers were killed, while 1,212 Germany railway workers and 3,670 soldiers were wounded:76 “Losses of railway personnel were greater than from air attacks and railway accidents [that is, those not instigated by acts of sabotage—A.G.] in the east taken together.”77 This pertains to all of Belarus. Of course, German losses were smaller in Ukraine. After an explosion the Germans would repair the majority of locomotives right there on the spot, otherwise they would be taken back to Germany.78 Summarizing the data, one may assume that during the war the Soviet Ukrainian partisans were able to damage 2,300 steam locomotives and approximately 7,000 train cars. It would appear that these acts of sabotage claimed the lives of approximately 1,500 people, and up to 5,000 railway workers, civilians, and enemy officers and soldiers were wounded. Furthermore, on the railways in occupied Ukraine the proportion of local workers and railway transport workers was 88.5 per cent79—Germans were a minority; that is, considering the large-scale and successful secret intelligence work of the Soviet side, including the partisans, the damage to the Wehrmacht’s communications could have been significantly greater. *** The above-mentioned comparison between the German and partisan accounts indicates that in its reports the UShPD exaggerated the effectiveness of partisan warfare by 10 to 20 times. The number of fatalities stemming from sabotage was particularly inflated. According to the UShPD, between 1941 and 1944, 14,000 partisans were killed or died of their injuries and 10,000 were wounded (this number does not include losses among GRU and NKVD detachments or the 30,000 partisans who “disappeared” in 1941 and 1942).80 However, the 24,000 killed and wounded Soviet partisans do not represent a final figure because partisan commanders periodically underestimated or concealed data on battle losses within their ranks.81 As the system of record-keeping was far from ideal, it was sometimes possible to conceal losses.

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92  •  Stalin’s Commandos Thus, it would seem that German losses were no greater than the partisans’. The struggle behind the front creates a predisposition to fantasizing in reports, inasmuch as the results of skirmishes and acts of sabotage are extremely difficult to corroborate. Moreover, the partisans were part of the Soviet system, in which distorting postscripts added to documentation were an integral feature of record-keeping within the closed Soviet society. A particularly vivid illustration of this is a fragment from a report written by the head of the First Department of the UShPD, LieutenantColonel Pohrebenko, about the situation in Kovpak’s unit: Communist partisans are showing examples of heroism and audacity in the struggle against the fascists: … With his rifle a young communist, the fighter Tereshin (Ivanov’s detachment) shot point-blank 12 fascists who were trying to capture him alive, and he made it back safely to his unit. During the battle Khomutin, the group commander (Ivanov’s detachment), together with his group, allowed the Hitlerites to approach to within 25–30 meters [and] machine-gunned up to 350 fascists point-blank.82

A comparison of German and partisan battle data always reveals multiple quantitative83 overestimations on the part of partisan scribblers or the inflation of figures relating to their struggle, for example as regards the rank of killed enemies.84 Over time, the same partisan commander often inflated information about his exploits.85 Occasionally, the partisans accused each other of lying and reported such cases to the leadership. After the rout of the Belarusian town of DavydHaradok on 25 July 1943, Sudoplatov informed the TsShPD: “Saburov reported to Comrade Strokach that during this surprise attack 139 German soldiers and local policemen were killed. In fact, up to 20 were killed, in which connection it is not known whether they were policemen or the residents of the small town.”86 A summary sent by Erich Koch’s team to the Eastern Ministry reveals that in May–July 1943, 1,009 attacks on railways took place on the territory of the Reichskommissariat:87 312 in May, 315 in June, and 385 in July. According to UShPD data, the number of locomotives blown up during those three months rose threefold. It is more than likely that in the summer of 1943, in reaction to Strokach’s increasingly tougher demands to blow up more trains, the partisans responded not only with a small but real growth of success but also with an inflated number of “acts of sabotage on paper.”

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The Main Directions of Red Partisan Activities  •  93 It is no accident that on 3 August 1943 the experienced saboteur Hryhorii Balytsky, commander of the Stalin Detachment, part of the Chernihiv-Volyn unit, recorded the following entry in his journal: “Received a wireless message from Comrade Fedorov. ‘The 7th Battalion [of our large unit] destroyed 19 trains.’ It questions where it could have destroyed 19 trains, when the Kovel–Sarny route is not working; trains travel in the daytime, but at night no trains whatsoever are moving.”88 Exactly one month later the commanders of two large partisan units based in the Rivne region, Vasyl Behma and Ivan Fedorov, who were resentful of the actions of their colleague Oleksii Fedorov, complained to Khrushchev and Strokach that in his personal reports Fedorov was co-opting the results of sabotage carried out by their own men and, furthermore, by army intelligence units: “Such behavior is nothing more than an act of deceiving the government.”89 In the struggle against postscripts, in 1943–44 Strokach limited himself to sending furious wireless messages to detachments. His attitude to the wave of partisan fantasies was unruffled, most likely because he himself had composed reports for the leadership in which he sought to present himself as a talented leader. But Strokach, too, had both direct superiors as well as colleagues who held a higher rank than he did in the system of power. One of Stalin’s deputies, Georgy Zhukov, questioned the veracity of the partisans’ data on the wrecking of many thousands of trains. Thus, after the Germans were driven out of most of Ukrainian territory, the Military Council of the 1st Ukrainian Front, together with the UShPD, carried out a verification of the results of the Ukrainian partisans’ activities. Since those who were being inspected were themselves involved in this “investigation,” the inspection revealed that “on average the real number of wrecks on railways carried out by the partisans was 30 per cent higher than reckoned according to the reports of the Ukrainian Staff.”90 Strokach later explained this figure by pointing to acts of sabotage carried out by the RU GSh KA, army groups, the NKVD, underground members, and “non-departmental” partisans. In order to counter more effectively the pressure from Zhukov, in one memorandum the head of the UShPD appended several photographs showing train wrecks. In the end, the UShPD data were forwarded to the Supreme Commander in Chief and later included in Soviet history textbooks—sometimes even those that were published in the post-Soviet period.

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94  •  Stalin’s Commandos

Terror In this book the meaning of “terror” is treated broadly as the killing or inflicting of serious physical damage on unarmed and unresisting people. As a rule, the goal of such actions was to intimidate. Command centers based behind the front issued direct orders to carry out repression. Other actions were permitted by the UShPD and the CC CP(B)U, but some killings were condemned by the partisans’ military and political leadership. However, the lack of any direct movement to prevent the killings arguably makes these leaders complicit in them. Not only was no Ukrainian partisan commander of any large unit or detachment ever executed, but not a single one was even recalled to the rear for committing atrocities against civilians. *** The directive issued on 29 June 1941 by the Soviet government and the CC AUCP(B) to party organizations based at the front already contained the order “to create intolerable conditions for the enemy and his accomplices [in abandoned districts], pursue and destroy them every step of the way.”91 Stalin expressed the very same words in his radio message broadcast on 3 July 1941.92 The Kremlin’s directives were disseminated downwards by representatives from the middle ranks of power. On 21 July 1941 the commander responsible for protecting the military rear of the South-western Front issued a directive ordering the formation of sabotage groups and the selection of agents, one of whose goals was to “expose adherents and accomplices of German fascism … The mission is assigned to the more courageous and decisive part of this secret agent network: to set fire to property and, wherever possible, to physically destroy the accomplices of German fascism.”93 In an order issued by the NKVD of the Ukrainian SSR on 30 November 1941 these goals were defined more concretely: The German aggressors … in rural locales appoint village elders, foremen, and policemen; in cities and urban settlements—chairmen of municipal administrations, mayors, commandants, heads of police, and other officials … The activities of these fascist curs go completely unpunished on our part … I order: 1. Organize at once the systematic, general … extermination of the fascist administration and their property … 2. For these purposes, use everything at our disposal and seek out new, supplementary secret agent possibilities.

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The Main Directions of Red Partisan Activities  •  95 For these purposes, make wide use of partisans, sabotage groups, and intelligence agents … 3. … Create special terrorist groups numbering from three to five men to carry out missions to destroy the fascist administration.94

The order concerning the destruction of property was aimed at the relatives of “traitors of the motherland.” The first relatively large-scale and well-known terror action against collaborators may be considered the raid into the Poltava region in October–December 1941, which was carried out by the Budenny Partisan Detachment commanded by Ivan Kopenkin, who before the war had been the plenipotentiary official of the Tatarbunary raion department of the NKVD. According to Kopenkin’s account, his fighters shot civilians loyal to the Germans, agents of German security services, village elders, “churchgoers” (obviously devout individuals or ministers of various religions), Red Army deserters, as well as captive soldiers released by the Germans. Those killed were 14 years or older.95 Kopenkin frankly recounted that he himself also killed the relatives of executed citizens, including the wife, mother, and daughter of a village elder (a former kulak), explaining that they “were actively disseminating anti-Soviet rumors.” News of the raid reached the leadership of the NKVD USSR: “More than 50 village elders and other fascist minions were exterminated. There is a partisan named ‘Sasha’ in the detachment, who by himself destroyed 25 German minions and traitors of the motherland.”96 Written on this document, possibly by Beria’s deputy Ivan Serov, are the words “Des[erves] an award.” According to the accounts of residents living in Koriukivka raion, Chernihiv oblast, the partisans killed former captured soldiers and commanders whom the German administration had sent back to their homes,97 as well as deserters. In particular, “they tied [them] to two trees and tore them in two.”98 The former red partisan Vasyl Yermolenko confirmed this: “They torture then they kill. You have to fight, not run away.”99 Operating in the spirit of class terror, the partisans killed kulaks because they believed they had a hostile attitude to the Soviet government. In the Chernihiv region, on 30 October 1941, Oleksii Fedorov, in his very first order to the detachment that he himself created in Malo-Divych raion, indicated “those who had not been finished off ” in a list of people slated for liquidation: “In the village of Strilnyky, destroy all kulaks who have occupied their former houses.”100 Ivan Shary, a Red Army veteran, recounted that in the village of Reimentarivka, Chernihiv oblast, partisans from Borys Tunyk’s detachments used an ax to dismember a kulak named Danylo Ivanovych; the following day the same fate befell the peasant’s wife.101

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96  •  Stalin’s Commandos The main target of partisan terror in 1941–42 remained police and civilian collaborators, who were frequently killed along with members of their families by partisans, including Oleksii Fedorov 102 and Mikhail Naumov.103 During a ten-month period in 1941–42 the Kharkiv partisan detachment, part of Saburov’s unit, which operated mainly in RSFSR districts adjoining the Ukrainian SSR, “executed 28 traitors of the motherland (policemen, village elders, spies, etc.) … 30 families of the traitors were liquidated and their property was confiscated.”104 As of 16 June 1942 this detachment numbered 38 men. Every so often in partisan detachments, the results of partisanengineered terror surpassed the effects of their combat activities,105 although occasionally the partisans recorded the victims of terror among enemies in combat. Evdokiia Laukina, a resident of the village of Sopych in Hlukhiv raion, Sumy oblast, recounted that during an attack on her village in February 1942 the local policemen defended themselves from inside a church for two days, while the partisans were going around killing the members of their families: wives, children, and elderly relatives.106 In a situation report Commander Ivanov of the Red Detachment confirmed that during the course of this battle 83 policemen were killed by the forest soldiers.107 An order issued to the detachment concerning the overall results of the battle for Sopych noted the following statistics: “More than 50 policemen’s homes were destroyed by fire.”108 Setting fire to homes109 tallied with the orders handed down by the com­ mand centers concerning the “destruction of the property of traitors of the motherland,” which condemned entire families to terrible material deprivation and a winter spent in dugouts. During attacks on villages the detachments led by Oleksii Fedorov burned dozens of homes,110 reports of which reached the highest leadership of the NKVD USSR by the spring of 1942.111 The journal kept by a partisan from one of the detachments of Fedorov’s unit contains several eloquent details pertaining to a raid into the Chernihiv region, which took place in the summer of 1942. After capturing the village of Pereliub, in Koriukivka raion, Fedorov’s men “rushed to set fire to the animals’ nests. At the same time, people for whom we had long been searching often jumped out of the burning buildings. We made short work of them.”112 The journal then goes on to describe the artillery bombardment of the raion center and a number of operations targeting the village police, after which the author summarizes: “Smoke from fires that took place as a result of battles wafted over the villages.”113 According to the account of Ivan Chohun, a resident of the village of Zemlianka, Hlukhiv raion, Sumy oblast, in 1942 some drunken partisans from Saburov’s unit fired incendiary bullets into the village, and as a result

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The Main Directions of Red Partisan Activities  •  97 42 homes were burned and a dozen people were killed.114 The motive for this operation was that some local policemen had killed a partisan from Saburov’s unit. Yet this was not the full extent of it. After the war, Iosef Sen told Soviet security services about the elimination of an entire “police” village in Russia: An offensive took place on 27 and 28 April [1942]. Saburov’s, our, and Esman detachments were ordered to take the village of Seredyna-Buda. But to take it, we had to first take Zernovo village, which was a key point, as the police of three raions were concentrated there … By 11 p.m., we had come to Zernovo and began to burn houses. Of 380 houses, only 25 remained. This was the most harmful village.115

On 18 May 1942 Saburov was awarded the title of Hero of the Soviet Union. Pravda correspondent Leonid Korobov cited the following testimony: “Saburov is fighting harder than Kovpak. He is literally burning out the police with flames. He says: Why are the police burning out partisan families; why should we spare them? Wherever Saburov has passed through, there are no police.”116 In the Chernihiv area, in the large Za Rodinu (“For the Motherland”) unit, Lev Ayzen recalled how policeman prisoners were beheaded using a cavalry sword: “They’re cutting off his head, but he’s screaming, ‘Long live Stalin!’”117 The death of policemen and members of the local administration in 1941–42 in the north-eastern part of the Ukrainian SSR and adjacent territories sparked alarm among the members of the rear-line sections of Army Group B, who noted the following on 9 August 1942: Partisan activity remains unchanged. They break into villages suddenly in strong groups, drag away men fit for military service, kill mayors and other individuals who are considered friendly with the Germans … In … the village of Komarivka they left behind handwritten posters: “Death to traitors of the motherland who did not go to fight, and death to the families from which the daughters and sons were recruited into the Germans’ service.” Killings … a regulation to safeguard families whose breadwinners have been killed is urgently required.118

Starting in the winter of 1942–43, the forest soldiers began trying to lure policemen over to their side, a fact that was noted in an SD report

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98  •  Stalin’s Commandos describing the situation in Ukraine, dated 12 February 1943: “During one week alone around 120 people, whose relatives were members of guard formations, were killed or taken away … A leaflet with the contents, ‘The families of all those who march against the Slavic peoples, who help the German enemy, will be executed,’ shows the centralized leadership of these actions.”119 Clearly, the SD specialists were mistaken: from 1943 onwards, the UShPD and TsShPD were generally opposed to the execution of policemen’s families, and an instruction concerning the demoralizing of collaborationist formations ordered the broad dissemination among the local population of information “about the good treatment [that is given] to those who have gone over to the partisans.”120 Nevertheless, the mass repressions continued. At a session of the Politburo of the CC CP(B)U held on 3 April 1943 Nikita Khrushchev spoke about the desirability of partisan terror: “Raids produce positive results also in the sense that they instill fear in unstable elements among Ukrainians and Russians living on occupied territory who would like to make a deal [with the Germans] but are consequently afraid of reprisals from our detachments.”121 Indeed, this fear of Soviet reprisal was not unjustified. According to a report sent to the TsShPD by Sudoplatov, head of the 4th Directorate of the NKGB USSR, on 25 July 1943 Saburov’s large unit sacked the town of Davyd-Haradok in Belarus: During the night, when the detachment broke into the small town, German soldiers and the police left the town for the barracks … All of them remained unharmed. Com[rade] Saburov issued an order supposedly [this word is inscribed by hand—A.G.] to loot the homes of the town’s residents and burn the town itself. The fighters instantly rushed to all the apartments and after looting them they burned the town.122

Kovpak’s description of the return of his unit from the Carpathian raid in August–September 1943 through the territory of Western Ukraine resembles an account of daily killings: “Passing through villages, we left traces of ourselves … destroying and distributing supplies, shooting German lackeys hated by the people.”123 From time to time the partisans murdered local Germans,124 but since comparatively few Volksdeutscher lived in the area of Soviet Ukrainian partisan operations, the destruction of Ukrainian Germans did not take place on a mass scale. The same cannot be said of German POWs: The killing of German prisoners by Red Army troops was a daily event on the Soviet–German

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The Main Directions of Red Partisan Activities  •  99 front from the very first days of the war—arrangements concerning this came from the very top. Already on 19 July 1941, Ponomarenko wrote to Stalin: “Partisans do not take prisoners.”125 On 4 September 1941, during his talks with Stalin, the commander of the reserve front, Georgy Zhukov, said that it was not prisoners of war but turncoats who provided valuable intelligence data. Stalin replied: “Do not believe prisoners of war very much; ask him [a POW] with passion [a euphemism for torture—A.G.] and then shoot him.”126 On 6 November 1941, when Stalin delivered his well-known speech at a meeting of the Moscow city soviet (“parliament”), the Soviet leader called for the “extermination of all Germans, every last one of them, who have made their way into the territory of our Motherland as its occupiers. No mercy to the German occupiers!” At a conference with a number of partisan commanders on 30 August 1942, these arrangements were repeated by Ponomarenko: “It is best to use them [the Germans] in the other world, as they say. The Germans should tremble at the sound of the partisans’ name … As for the Slovaks and Hungarians, those should obviously be exploited.”127 In the spring of 1943, the writer Mykola Sheremet, who had spent four months with Fedorov’s unit, testified that the partisans acted in accordance with these directives: “The partisans are destroying every last German on the spot. They often kill other nationalities, and they release some so that they will tell the truth about the partisans.”128 The UShPD regularly gave permission to liquidate prisoners of war in local areas.129 In this respect the partisans’ conduct remained unchanged until the very end of the war.130 As a result, the Germans tried to avoid being captured by partisans and therefore fought courageously. Mikhail Naumov, the commander of a large cavalry unit, described a revealing incident that took place in January 1944: On the Berezne highway, Mokvyn Station, the Kyiv Detachment succeeded in killing 22 gendarme officers and commandants evacuated from Zhytomyr oblast … An armor-piercer fired at a car … The shell pierced the motor … and a spare petrol tank … which, upon exploding, splashed flames onto the officers. They jumped out of the car into a hailstorm of bullets, enveloped in flames. But they did not lose their heads. For a long time one officer kept firing at the partisans with a machine gun from inside the car, while all the clothing on him was burning. That’s how he died, with a weapon in his hands … Nevertheless, the Germans managed to wound five of our partisans.131

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100  •  Stalin’s Commandos Before being shot, prisoners of war were often tortured in order to intimidate the remaining enemy forces, to obtain information during interrogations, or just to satisfy the torturers’ sadistic impulses. One field commandant’s office informed the command of the rear zone of Army Group South that on 11 March 1942, during the abovementioned attack on the village of Ivanivka, located near the Ukrainian– Russian border, the Fedorov’s subordinates cut off the hands of policemen’s children.132 The residents of Koriukivka raion in Chernihiv oblast recounted that Fedorov’s men gouged out prisoners’ eyes, knocked out the teeth of people who were condemned to death,133and put salt on people after flaying the skin off their bodies.134 The writer Mykola Sheremet wrote to Khrushchev about the widespread nature of the torture inflicted by the partisans: Before shooting policemen, village elders, [and] mayors who resist, the partisans “teach them a lesson.” Fedorov’s partisans were noted for their particular savagery. I witnessed policemen being beaten to a bloody pulp, slashed with knives, their hair set on fire, their legs tied with rope to a horse and dragged through a forest, scalded with hot tea, their genitals cut off.135

According to the diary of Hryhorii Balytsky, commander of the Stalin Detachment of the Chernihiv-Volyn unit, after several months nothing had changed: On 4 April 1943 … a mayor was brought … to the unit’s headquarters; a partisan hand finished him off here. They beat this villain with whatever they could; they also poured boiling water on him. Lunch at the unit’s headquarters. They drank vodka … Afterwards the mood was exceptionally fine. Late in the evening a small concert was organized at the unit headquarters. The partisans performed songs and told stories, there were dances […] On 21 July 1943 … [some] Germans were brought to the camp location […] After all the conversations I divided the Germans into companies: there they were beaten to death and then buried.136

Aleksei Artamonov, a veteran of the large Mikhailov Kamianets-Podilsky unit, described what the partisans did with a Russian who was a former German agent: “They interrogated him properly, you know, partisan-style … We found out everything … We had a latrine, it was a pit … we tied him up and threw him in there. He spent two days dying in that shit.”137

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The Main Directions of Red Partisan Activities  •  101 Vasyl Yermolenko, a veteran of the Vinnytsia unit, described the following incident. During a battle a 16-year-old partisan was captured by a Czechoslovak subunit. After some time he returned to the partisan detachment with a note about the Czechoslovaks’ intention to come over to the reds: “The commander of the detachment was Maniukov (an officer who had been encircled); so, he assigned [that partisan] to counterintelligence. And a day later the head of counterintelligence personally shot him […] It was terrible to look at the man, he was mutilated.”138 Later, a few Czechoslovaks were captured by that unit, whereupon they revealed that the messenger who was murdered by Melnyk’s counterintelligence men had told the truth. Mark Meshok, a veteran of Stepan Malikov’s Zhytomyr unit, recounted how at the age of 12 he was given an order to shoot a policeman with a Nagant pistol and hang a village elder, which he obeyed. The latter did not die easily: “Before my eyes Kiiashkin [the NKVD military counterintelligence officer of the detachment—A.G.] tortured this Skrytsky [the village elder—A.G.] … He crushed his fingers in a door— he shut the door, the fingers cracked. Kiiashkin had a chain in his hands; the whole time he walked around with the chain … He beat him with the chain.”139 Ivan Khytrychenko, commander of the Khrushchev unit, openly reported to the personnel of the Soviet organization about an execution that took place amidst a great crowd of people in the raion center of Novoshepelychi, in Ukraine’s Polissia region: “Our boys captured alive the head of the gendarmerie and two gendarmes … And we burned them alive.”140 Scenes like this recall medieval times. Soviet141 and Nazi data142 mention a case in which a captured German was burned alive in a steam locomotive furnace. Meshok testified that a group of partisans kidnapped Hania, a German prostitute, from a village and tortured her for having bullied a captured partisan: “There were two young birches, they used horses to bend them and tied [her] … They tied her hands and legs to both trees. Then with sabers they cut these ropes at the same time, she was torn apart, and crows pecked her to death; she was still alive there for a long time.”143 Both German144 and Banderite documents record the dismemberment of killed individuals by the partisans, including Kovpak’s men.145 The partisans also took hostages, a practice which they sometimes resorted to, depending on the specific operational mission. For example, on 6 September 1942 a group of partisans occupied the Russian village of Podivote, located on the border between Russia and Ukraine’s Sumy oblast, from where they had been driven out by Hungarian hussars and policemen;

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102  •  Stalin’s Commandos 21 forest soldiers were captured. During the night some partisans entered the village, shot three policemen, and “dragged away to the forest 10 residents who were known to be friendly with the Germans. The bandits sent a message to the guard command [saying] that the 21 prisoners should be released immediately, otherwise the 10 residents of Podivote would be shot.”146 The commander of a Polish Soviet detachment, Mikołaj Kunicki (“Mucha”), who had fought in Volyn, recalled that when the partisans needed to hold talks with the Hungarians, they captured the village elder (a Volksdeutscher), together with his wife and children. After sending the village elder to the Hungarians, they warned the messenger that his family would be shot if he did not return or if he returned with other people. The village elder carried out the partisans’ assignment as requested.147 Violent excesses committed by former partisans continued even after the end of the occupation, which exasperated the party. In September 1943, in the village of Ivanytsia, Chernihiv oblast, a former commander of a partisan detachment named Parchenko arbitrarily arrested 25 policemen, village elders, and other former collaborators, whom he led into the woods and shot. In another case, a group of former partisans arrived at the home of a priest in the village of Yablunivka, Chernihiv oblast. Not finding him at home, they killed his wife and her sister. During the night of 18 October 1943, in the village of Zaudaiky, Ichnia raion, a group of former partisans approached a house inhabited by the family of a policeman who had fled with the Germans. They tossed two grenades onto the roof of the house and fired off a few shots through a window, which killed the policeman’s father-in-law.148 The Soviet uniformed services expended considerable effort on bringing to heel former partisans accustomed to their “forest” life. It is worth mentioning another type of partisan terror, whose existence may be inferred but which is difficult to pin down in archival documents. These are killings that were committed for reasons of personal enmity. Owing to the bloody events that had taken place between 1914 and 1941, life in Ukrainian villages, especially Soviet ones, were marked by a surfeit of dormant squabbles and smoldering animosities. During the field research for this book some information was uncovered in the village of Reimentarivka, Koriukivka raion, Chernihiv oblast. Ivan Shary, who gave an interview, was an ordinary peasant during the German occupation in 1941–43, and later fought in the ranks of the Red Army in 1943–45. To the first question, “Do you remember the local partisans?” he replied, “Yes, I remember well; they were killing the civil population.” Shary recounted that the former head of the local collective farm, Borys Tunyk, commanded a detachment during the war. He killed people

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The Main Directions of Red Partisan Activities  •  103 during trivial altercations, including occasions when he felt disrespected.149 According to another resident of Reimentarivka, Fedor Razstolny, Tunyk’s partisans killed Fedor’s grandfather right in front of him—not because his father Egor, the son of the man who was killed, was a policeman but because the grandfather had quarreled with this partisan before the war.150 According to Fedor, partisans killed two residents of Reimentarivka strolling along a forest path for their own personal reasons. After the war, Tunyk, who had become the head of the Reimentarivka village soviet, died by drowning. Local residents said that investigators had several theories about his death. According to one, he was killed because of the excessive severity he had demonstrated in his official position: he outlawed pilfering on the collective farm and refused to issue passports to collective farmers who wanted to leave: “He probably drove someone [to killing him].” According to the second theory, the motive behind his murder was jealousy: the former detachment commander and another resident of Reimentarivka were courting the same woman. According to Razstolny’s account, the investigator reached his own conclusion after questioning the villagers: the head of the village soviet had been killed in revenge for his exploits in 1941–43. Afterwards, an entry appeared in the investigation report to the effect that Tunyk drowned as a result of an accident, and the case was closed owing to the lack of evidence pointing to a crime. *** The scale of partisan terror reached its peak in 1943–44, during the Soviets’ struggle against the OUN and the UPA. Most of the Soviet Ukrainian partisans were natives of the central and eastern regions of the Ukrainian SSR. It was practically impossible for the red partisans not to encounter their relatives, friends, and fellow servicemen among the residents of Western Ukraine. Moreover, the majority of Western Ukrainians sympathized with the UPA, while the spread of the OUN’s underground network created the illusion that 100 per cent of the Ukrainians of Ukraine’s western oblasts supported the Banderites. On the whole, UShPD detachments were never able to gain control over Ukrainian Greek-Catholic (Uniate) Galicia, where red terror during the German occupation was insignificant. However, villages in Orthodox Volyn suffered significantly. In the spring of 1943, a war erupted between the Ukrainian red partisans and the Ukrainian nationalists, and civilians who were in no way involved in the Ukrainian resistance movement, not to mention members of the OUN underground, UPA fighters, and the members of their families, all fell victim to the partisans’ wrath.

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104  •  Stalin’s Commandos Sidor Kalashnikov, a veteran of Ivan Shitov’s unit, recounted the circumstances leading up to an event that took place in the district of Rokytne, Rivne oblast, where the partisans burned down their first Ukrainian village: In early March [1943] the following incident took place between us and Bulba’s men … Our solo group was returning by the Sarny–Olevsk road after blowing up a train. In Karpylivka we were stopped by Bulba’s men, three were killed. After this we went to Karpylivka, disarmed them, and warned, “If you keep doing this, we will burn down the village.” They became even more enraged; in Karpylivka they fired on a second group, and we also had losses. After this we went to the village and burned it to the ground.151

At this time Shitov’s unit had just been detached from Saburov’s Zhytomyr unit. The head of the UShPD gave the go-ahead for massive reprisals to be carried out. On 22 April 1943 Strokach sent the following wireless message after receiving a report from Saburov about his men shooting several dozen Ukrainian nationalists in reprisal after a Soviet saboteur was killed: “I approve the actions of the 24th Anniversary of the Red Army Unit. In every case of their [Ukrainian nationalists’] attack, punish savagely. With leaflets warn [people] that 15 OUNites and their German masters will be destroyed for one partisan.”152 Saburov’s men carried out this recommendation scrupulously.153 The consequences of this order are revealed in an OUN report from Western Ukraine, which was written in the summer of 1943. According to this report, in June of that year, “in Kolky raion a Bolshevik gang numbering 90 men from some Polish villages attacked the village of Pilche. People began to flee, the gang broke into the village and looted whatever it could lay its hands on, and mercilessly killed everyone who fell into its hands. In this village 35 people were killed.”154 Soviet situation reports describe similar operations. For example, according to the combat log of the Khrushchev Detachment, part of the large Shchors unit from Zhytomyr, on 29 June 1943 in the village of Kobylnia, Korets raion, Rivne oblast, “during a battle that broke out against the nationalists, 30 houses belonging to the nationalists were burned down by incendiary bullets, 2 nationalists were killed, and a nationalist flag was captured.”155 Nineteen men took part in this operation, during which the partisans did not sustain any losses. In July 1943 the conflict between the Soviet partisans and the Banderites acquired a more brutal form:

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The Main Directions of Red Partisan Activities  •  105 Lately, the following villages were burned and our members and sympathizers were killed: in Vysotske raion [the northern part of Rivne oblast], the village of Sernyky, 60 houses were burned, 40 families were killed, around 100 families went into the underground and are living in other villages and cities. In the village of Ivanychi 10 families were killed, in the village of Vychavky 30 people were killed, approximately 70 families [went] underground … In Stolyn raion [Pinsk oblast, Belarusian SSR], the village of Rechitsa, 30 houses were burned, 5 of our families were killed … In Dubrovytsia raion [Rivne oblast] Bolshevik groups passing through burned the village of Orvianytsia—12 houses; in the village of Nyvetsk 10 houses were burned, a girl [a member of the OUN youth organization] was killed; in the village of Hrani—40 houses (some had been burned earlier by the Poles and the Germans); in the village of Tryputnia—10 houses; in the village of Zalishany—90 houses … During attacks on our villages they rush cursing like madmen to the graves honoring heroes, dig them up with their hands, smash crosses … In the village of Nyvetsk, Dubrovytsia raion [Rivne oblast] one gang passing through tied one of our members to a cross and blew him up with a mine together with the grave.156

When Yakiv Melnyk, commander of the Vinnytsia unit, and his men were passing through Rivne oblast, he recorded in his diary on 15 August: “Houses were still burning in the village of Tomashhorod. I asked some local residents: ‘Who burned the village?’ An old man standing nearby replied, that two days earlier partisans under Shitov’s command burned the village because someone in the village had fired at them.”157 After the war information from Soviet documents came to light stating that Tomashhorod was destroyed by the Germans, who killed 702 people. It is likely that some cases of partisan terror were attributed to the occupiers.158 The unfolding conflict between the Soviet partisans and Ukrainian radical right-wing resistance movement reached the Belarusian–Ukrainian borderlands. In August 1943 the following nationalistic report was sent from this territory: In the Berestia [Brest] area much of the rural population is fleeing the Germans and the reds because the reds are looting, shooting, and literally slaughtering the most committed people, and when they are drunk, they frequently destroy whomever they come across … If they find even a scrap of our literature on someone, most often that person has to part with his life.159

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106  •  Stalin’s Commandos The general picture of partisan terror in Volyn and Polissia in September 1943 is revealed in a report written by an OUN underground member based in north-western Ukraine: “Wherever our growth can be halted temporarily, reckless methods are used there, even people who lead our detachments as guides are killed … Reds disguised as the UPA enter people’s homes and thus expose their enemies, who are killed mercilessly.”160 Not infrequently the partisans burned down houses in the very same villages where earlier the Germans had carried out punitive operations. The following report was sent from the northern part of Rivne oblast in October 1943: “They burned the village of Chudan again and most of the village of Kaminne.”161 A report dated October–November 1943, sent from the north-eastern part of Rivne oblast, describes a partisan attack on a village: During the night a large number of reds attacked the village of Karpylivka: they looted it, burned it, and killed 183 of our peasants … They surrounded the village of Dert, looted it (they took up to 300 head of cattle). They captured a peasant, placed him on top of a grave, and blew it up. On 3 November they attacked the village of Borove once again; they burned properties that had been left standing by the Germans, and they killed 20 peasants.162

The massacre of Karpylivka (Sarny district) was the largest single act of partisan terror in the entire USSR, and again the Soviet victors later accused the Germans of perpetrating it.163 To illustrate the partisan terror in Volyn, let us relate the story of Raisa Sydorchuk, a resident of the burned-out village of Stara Rafalivka in north Rivne oblast. We are referring here to the destruction of the entire village in October 1943 by Anton Brynsky’s brigade (which was subordinate to the Red Army General Staff Intelligence Directorate) together with Oleksii Fedorov’s partisans.164 The punitive operation was carried out at the height of the war between the Banderites and the communists, but partisan repressions of the population had begun even before the creation of the UPA: The Germans had gone around our town. They’re in Nova Rafalivka, which is about 15 kilometers from us. But Red partisans soon stirred in the woods around Stara Rafalivka … They often frequented our town, calling themselves “Uncle Petya’s” partisans [referring to Colonel

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The Main Directions of Red Partisan Activities  •  107 Brynsky—A.G.], and also petrovtsy [from “Petya”—“Peter”]. We met with them, sang songs together, and helped them with foodstuffs … Our good relations with the petrovtsy came to an end once they came to power. It began when “Uncle Petya’s” partisans took it upon themselves to “hold court” over families whose children had served with the Schutzmanns. At that time—and for this reason—a savage reprisal was made against the Pasevych family. Besides the elders, there were two girls in the family and three boys—Mykola, Dmytro, and Leonid (who had served with the Schutzmanns). Mykola was saved by his not being home that evening … The elder Pasevych was killed immediately … Everyone was shot. After making the mother, Palazhka, watch all of this, they ended things by putting three bullets in the old woman. But as it turned out, she survived, and lived another 20 years … The family of Maria Yanovitskaya was dealt with the same way, leaving only the youngest boy, as was the Palamarchuk family … In all, there were seven children in the family: sons Ivan (who had joined the Schutzmanns), Andrii, and Heorhii, and daughters Nadia, Klava, Yulia, and Vera … All of the Palamarchuks—except for Ivan and Heorhii, who were not found at home by the partisans—were made to kneel and then shot … Meanwhile, all around, the usual robbery took place … When this kind of thing started, we had more reason to hide from the petrovtsy than from the bandits. At first, we sat out their attacks. Later, father dug a hiding place for me in the bee house, in the corner, where there were bushes and impassable nettles … In 1943, Banderites came to Stara Rafalivka. A lot of them. Some kind of UPA element. Their guide went by the name “Verniy.” We became alarmed, because who knows? Why are they here, and what can we expect? But we see that they’re not pestering anyone. They’re not even going into houses … Later, they left 16 of their own as a garrison, and went off somewhere … One day, early in the morning, I’m kindling the stove and I hear something like a shot somewhere. Then our parents cried out: “Run! Hide in the bee house!” By now, there’s shooting from all sides, and there’s a fire. We hid, but Halia [a neighbor’s child—A.G.] didn’t … I crawled out, and I see that Halia is running. She’s carrying small baskets with kittens in front of her. I yell to her: “Get over here!” But she waved her hands and says, “Wait, I’ll be right there!” She was woozy with fear. She brought the kittens to the cow shed. After a little while, such a horrible cry came from in there, I can’t properly describe it.

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108  •  Stalin’s Commandos When everything settled down, we found out that the petrovtsy had surrounded Stara Rafalivka and engaged in “combat with the Banderites.” Several Banderites were killed, and I reckon our small town was completely destroyed. And people who were not guilty of anything were killed, I won’t even say how many. Halia was thrown alive into the fire. The old men found her burned corpse near the cow shed. And in the courtyard, and near the house—also burned—there were another six bodies of those who were just trying to survive. On our farm, only the cellar survived. They found Olezhik [a neighbour’s boy—A.G.] there. He was wearing his new shoes, which his grandmother had sewn, and his belly had been torn open by a bayonet. His mother had hidden elsewhere, and had been saved. She was told about her son. She ran up and took him … She carried Olezhik in her arms. The boy’s intestines had fallen out of his body and were dragging on the road. She was literally tripping over them, but she did not notice. Grief had taken her mind. I don’t believe Stara Rafalivka has ever known anything like this for as long as it has existed. Meanwhile, the Reds herded all who had been spared or who were simply in plain sight, and had them take apart the mound that had been raised by the Banderites [as a memorial to those who died for independence]. They didn’t even allow them to get shovels. And until that place was flat, they had to use their bare hands, despite the blood from under their nails, and move that earth, even if they had to gnaw at it with their teeth and carry it off a handful at a time. Later, everyone involved in the work was shot … The petrovtsy knew what kinds of good things were in what hut, just as they knew that the UPA’s principal forces, under the command of “Verniy,” had left it at that time, and so, they could demonstrate their “heroism.”165

Many years later, in an interview, Boris Gindin, one of the platoon commanders who participated in this operation, denied that there were any civilian victims.166 However, the events of other days are described in detail in his diary. The entry for 14 October is distinguished by its expressive brevity: “Action against nationalists in Rafalivka.”167 Sidorchuk’s story is confirmed by the October 1943 report of “Zarevo,” a political advisor of the UPA military district in this territory: “The Bolsheviks … Attacked Stara Rafalivka, which they burned. They killed 60 people, including 8 active raion functionaries. Political advisor ‘Teterya’ (Bugai) was killed. They threatened capital punishment against those who supported the UPA.”168

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The Main Directions of Red Partisan Activities  •  109 Let us assess the “precision” of this partisan terror: a large village was burned, 60 people were killed, and hundreds of others lost blood and their livelihood. Of those killed, only eight (13.3 per cent) were OUN members. It should be recalled that two and a half months after this massacre, Oleksii Fedorov, the commander of the Chernihiv-Volyn unit, was awarded a second Gold Star of the Hero of the Soviet Union (on 4 January 1944), while Colonel Anton Brynsky (known as “Uncle Petya”) was awarded the same honour on 4 February 1944, just two and a half months after soldiers from his brigade, together with Fedorov’s men, burned Stara Rafalivka. Even the population that was loyal to the Soviet government felt the force of the partisans’ blows. The command of the Chernihiv-Volyn unit sent an indignant complaint to the UShPD about its colleagues’ actions: On 21 November the partisans of the Polish Kosciuszko Detachment, part of the brigade [commanded by] Shubekidze of the [Belarusian] large Pinsk unit, burned down the partisan village of Liubiaz, Liubeshiv raion, Volyn oblast, numbering 250 farms. [In] November 4 scouts [in] a drunken state were moving [on] reconnaissance [toward] Liubiaz. En route the peasants warned that nationalists had arrived [in] the village, [but] paying no attention, they set out [for] the village, [as] as result of which they were killed by the nationalists. In revenge, the command decided to annihilate the entire village, which they did.169

This was done by the combined Stalin Detachment commanded by Ivan Konotopov: 50 individuals were selected from the Chapaev and Kos´ciuszko detachments of the Pinsk Brigade, and these put the village to the torch.170 After the war the destruction of Liubiaz was also blamed on the Germans.171 A month later Fedorov’s own subordinates, the members of the Wanda Wasilewska Polish Brigade, carried out a similar operation in the same district of Liubeshiv. According to the account of the eyewitness Valerii Hladych, there were no Banderites at the time in Liakhovychi. The reds attacked the village on the night of 19 December 1943. By morning it was almost completely destroyed […] They killed everyone they spotted. The first to be killed were Stepan Marchyk and his neighbor Matrena along with her eight-year-old daughter, Mykola Khvesyk and Matrena Khvesyk with their ten-year-old daughter … They killed the family of Ivan Khvesyk (wife, son, daughter-in-law, and [her] baby boy) and threw [them] into a burning house … Fifty innocent people perished.172

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110  •  Stalin’s Commandos An OUN report reports a smaller number of victims: On 18 December 1943, 150 reds attacked the village of Liakhovychi, where our fighting group was staying. Not in possession of automatic weapons, it should have left the village. The reds robbed the peasants blind, set fire to half the village, killed 25 people, wounded 15, [and] took 10 away with them. During the battle one of our comrades was wounded, two reds were killed.173

Although Hladych stated that the village had been burned by partisans from the Wanda Wasilewska Brigade of the Chernihiv-Volyn unit, it is not clear whether they participated in this attack or not. The operational report from the officers of the Belarusian large Pinsk unit’s Kos´ciuszko Detachment does not address who sent the second group of partisans— this could have been partisans from another detachment of the same large Pinsk unit: “The attack on the nationalist post in Lakhvin village during the night of 18–19 December 1943 together with a group of automatic riflemen, drawn from a p[artisan] detachment beyond the Buh. Up to 40 nationalists were killed in street-to-street fighting [a 40-fold exaggeration, though the following is true—A.G.], along with up to 30 civilians. One rifle was taken as a trophy.”174 Cheslav Klim commanded the detachment. The scale of Soviet partisan terror targeting the Western Ukrainian population was significantly smaller than that carried out by the Germans. It is very likely, however, that the scale of the terror inflicted on the Ukrainians by Polish nationalists was somewhat larger than the red partisans’ campaign of terror. For example, a Banderite report dated 25 December 1943 states: “Liudvypil raion [in the eastern part of Rivne oblast—A.G.] … Bolshevik gangs attack villages frequently … They set fire to farms, loot, and burn people … As of 1 December, 18 villages have been burned in the district, including 7 villages burned by the Germans, 9 by the Poles, and two by the reds.”175 Cases in which partisans mined various installations and objects, including dead bodies, for terrorist purposes were by no means rare.176 For example, the Molotov unit operated in the northern part of Volyn oblast (its commander was the brother of Petro Korotchenko, the secretary of the CC CP(B)U): On the night of 5 February [1944] the reds burned several farms in the village of Rudnia. The people fled to the woods. The reds “were in charge” here and in Kukaryky for a couple of days … they smashed ovens in houses, made a filthy mess everywhere in living quarters. They

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The Main Directions of Red Partisan Activities  •  111 mined the five best houses in Rudnia, three of which were already destroyed by mines … They went on to Mshanets … They killed a fifty-year-old man, who had been found with a weapon belonging to his son … They took away honey, destroying the hives with fire, shot horses, raped women.177

Korotchenko wrote that the “the majority of the population in these villages was nationalist, and upon our arrival in these villages one and all fled to the woods.”178 The wave of partisan terror even drew the disapproval of the UShPD. In December 1943 Tymofii Strokach rebuked the leadership of the Volyn unit named after Lenin, citing information that he had obtained through the unit’s radio operators: “In early December your reconnaissance unit of 50 men [operating] behind the Horyn River exterminated 48 civilians because one shot was fired.”179 However, the Center’s half-hearted objections had little effect on the partisans’ conduct, which elicited the following comment from a member of the Banderite underground from Western Polissia in January 1944: “Reckless terror and destruction of everything Ukrainian with the ferocity of the Stalin-era savages.”180 Galicia, too, felt the heavy hand of the partisans, albeit to a lesser degree. For example, a Banderite intelligence report noted the following about the large Shukaev unit: “Bolshevik partisans arrived in Chornyi Forest in late April […] They carry out attacks on the villages in the vicinity. On 29 April they attacked the village of Hrabivka, they burned more than a dozen farms and killed 18 civilians in a terrible fashion [and] 5 fighters from ‘Rizun’s’ detachment … They also shot 2 priests.”181 As usual, a nationalist report calls a partisan detachment with approximately 500 men operating in Lviv oblast in June 1944 a “gang”: “Retreating, [the gang] killed 6 Ukrainians … The people who were tortured to death were found with abdomens scorched by fire, with hands and legs scalded by boiling water, eyes gouged out, and noses and tongues sliced off.”182 Cases of partisan terror also took place after the end of the German occupation. On 21 March 1944 a Banderite self-defense unit in the village of Velyka Moshchanytsia in Mizoch raion, Rivne oblast, fired on a small group of partisans from the Beria Detachment, part of the Mikhailov Kamianets-Podilsky unit. The partisan unit then surrounded the village. The nationalists’ efforts to conduct negotiations ended in failure,183 and the village was wiped off the face of the earth. The unit commander reported the results of the operation to the UShPD:

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112  •  Stalin’s Commandos As a result of the battle, 224 peo[ple] were killed, 21 peo[ple] were taken prisoner, the number of wounded was not established. Trophies captured: 2 light automatic machine guns, one submachine gun, 50 rifles. Our losses: 4 wounded, 9 killed, 10 disappeared without a trace. During the battle there were artillery and mortars on our side, as a result of which fires broke out in the village.184

Many civilians were killed during the battle. Four months later Anton Odukha, who led the battle, was awarded the title of Hero of the Soviet Union. A general picture of the partisans’ terror in the western regions of the Ukrainian SSR emerges from the report of P. Mironov, commissar of the Zhukov Kamianets-Podilsky unit: Upon entering villages, they carried out practically a general confiscation of cattle and property and killed the male population in revenge for killed saboteurs. This was the case in the village of Bilchaky (Liudvypil raion [Rivne oblast]), where nearly the entire village was burned in June 1943 by the large unit [named after Khrushchev under the command of] C[omrade] Shitov. This was the case in the village of Zapruda, Sarny raion [Rivne oblast], on the part of C[omrade] Skubko’s large [Kamianets-Podilsky] unit [named after Zhukov]. Other large units did the same thing.185

It is impossible to establish the total number of people who were killed during the wave of partisan terror. The UShPD’s statistics, based on partisan situation reports, are distorted, while materials produced by the German side and the OUN and the UPA are incomplete. However, it is clear that the final tally must be in the thousands, and that the scale of terror was entirely commensurate with the results of the red partisans’ combat and sabotage activities.

Intelligence Gathering During the war partisan formations conducted intelligence gathering, in their own self-interest, for the purpose of safeguarding combat and sabotage operations. They also obtained and transmitted information to the NKVD of the Ukrainian SSR for its operational needs; from the summer of 1942 these data were sent directly to the UShPD, and indirectly to the Red Army and other interested departments. During

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The Main Directions of Red Partisan Activities  •  113 the occupation years the system of obtaining and processing information underwent definite structural changes. In 1941 the intelligence activity of partisan units was even less well prepared than the combat and sabotage operations that had been carried out earlier. Surviving partisans operated with the aid of common sense and personal experience, and they succeeded in organizing an intelligence service186 that was indispensable to the functioning of their detachments. In late 1941 Saburov was the only partisan commander in Ukraine equipped with a radio transmitter. Just before the New Year he transmitted the first reports to the NKVD of the Ukrainian SSR—that is, to the Red Army—in connection with the movement of troops along the Pochep–Briansk road. In January 1942 the NKVD of the Ukrainian SSR sent equipment to set up six transmitter-receivers for Ukrainian detachment bases. The general scope of information sent by the partisans was modest. Between 5 August 1941 and 8 January 1942, 123 announcements and thematic reports, based on data gathered by partisan detachments and agents, were sent by the NKVD of the Ukrainian SSR to the CC CP(B)U and the Red Army’s front-line command;187 solo agents also played a key role in this process.188 In addition, the NKVD of the Ukrainian SSR carried out interrogations of prisoners of war and turncoats, as well as receiving radio intercepts.189 During the first six months of the war the Ukrainian partisans confined themselves to gathering intelligence close to home. From January 1942 Saburov’s men began to send out groups of partisans to collect more distant intelligence—between 50 and 100 kilometers from the main forces of a detachment. From the time of the Fedorov-Popudrenko Detachment’s first creation, it had both a functioning military intelligence team and a separate counterintelligence department that dealt with exposing and killing enemy agents and disloyal individuals among the population and within the detachment.190 A network of internal informants was created, together with local informants. The head of military intelligence was not only responsible for assigning intelligence missions to all parts of a large unit, but, starting in early 1942, also headed a separate intelligence platoon. The efforts of partisan commanders produced concrete results. By the beginning of 1942 the log of a field command based in the northern part of Chernihiv oblast described the helplessness of guard units confronted by sudden partisan attacks on small units and the high mobility of the forest soldiers, which contributed to the exhaustion of German formations: “Thanks to their first-class intelligence service, [the partisans] always perform with extreme superiority and they are well equipped with firearms.”191

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114  •  Stalin’s Commandos On 7 May 1942 the commander of the rear zone of Army Group South, describing one of Fedorov’s detachments, indicated the presence in it of a mounted reconnaissance platoon. “In addition to the named intelligence detachment, in practically all populated areas the partisans have trusted individuals, who are constantly informing them about all movements of troops aimed against them, the forces of Ukrainian guard teams, etc. Interrogations of prisoners have shown that the partisans know the day and time of a German attack, as well as attack routes.”192 Justifying his inability to withstand the raids of Ukrainian detachments in Ukraine, the field police commander in the rear zone of Army Group B reported that Soviet saboteurs were very well informed: The partisans’ intelligence service in the a[bove] n[amed] oblasts functions wonderfully. Together with … reconnaissance units, they employ a broad network of trusted individuals in villages located along the routes of their movement. During raids they send the corresponding local people ahead of them, who establish contact with agents, learn about the forces of the Ukrainian police, the billeting of troops, and at the same time they carry out reconnaissance [to see whether] a route is clear.193

The partisans’ protected and well-organized radio communications were duly noted. Other large units gradually adopted the tactics of Fedorov’s men and created special reconnaissance groups and separate reconnaissance platoons that were often equipped with portable two-way radios.194 In early 1943 a similar practice was adopted by the main large Ukrainian units; as of January 1943, UShPD forces possessed 25 transmitter-receivers, and 120 by 1 August 1943.195 Based on the example of the Saburov unit, the general principles of secret-agent work and military intelligence were described in September 1942 by Filipp Kriukov, a member of the Political Directorate of the Southwestern Front: Distant intelligence gathering—by the frontline route of dispatching reconnaissance groups and individual intelligence agents […] Adolescents, women, and elderly men—partisans—are used most of all for this work. On the other hand, detachments have their own people in the enemy’s corresponding institutions and enterprises […] People are sent in the guise of refugees, peasants travelling to market … railway workers, workers with various specialties; finally, dancers, prancers, accordionists, etc., with a fake identity worked out beforehand.

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The Main Directions of Red Partisan Activities  •  115 Documents captured from the Germans are also used. Close intelligence gathering is carried out by intelligence agents from detachments, sometimes intelligence gathering by means of combat, German and Hungarian clothing is used; detachments obtain much information from the local population, especially from children. The accuracy of the acquired intelligence is controlled via the dispatching of other individuals tasked with the same mission.196

Kriukov also noted that not all partisan detachments carried out intelligence work for the Red Army on the necessary scale, and let it be understood that the intelligence directorates of front-line staffs were significantly delayed in obtaining information from the partisans. Moreover, the partisans’ dispatches from local areas and the reports that the NKVD of the Ukrainian SSR prepared on their basis during the first half of 1942 were not of the highest quality. In particular, the reporting severely understated he fighting spirit of Wehrmacht troops and their allies.197 As soon as a system for delivering information from the partisans to the NKVD of the Ukrainian SSR was set up, the Ukrainian Staff of the Partisan Movement was created, to whose authority partisan detachments but not the service-agent network were then transferred, thus separating the forest soldiers from the substantial number of informants residing in villages and especially in cities. In addition, owing to the Red Army’s retreat in the summer of 1942 and the various moves of the UShPD, radio communications were periodically interrupted. Thus, a second intelligence directorate of the UShPD was created, one that was staffed by employees of the 4th Directorate of the NKVD of the Ukrainian SSR. In the summer of 1942 there were hardly any qualified employees of the intelligence and counterintelligence services within existing partisan detachments.198 Saburov admitted as much during a meeting with Panteleimon Ponomarenko on 31 August 1942: “Our intelligence gathering is set up inadequately […] This shortcoming seems to be universal in all detachments […] Things are especially bad with the intelligence service. True, we had an intelligence service in Pochep, in Klyntsi, but it perished. The Germans do not investigate, but count out 100 people and shoot them instantly.”199 According to Saburov, during a meeting with the partisans in early September Stalin paid more attention to the intelligence service and promised cooperation: “If, for this, there is a need for ‘golden things,’ we will send golden things. I was surprised by the details that Comrade Stalin pointed out to us: how to select people, how to build secrecy, how to train

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116  •  Stalin’s Commandos people. He also told us how the Germans do this. Comrade Stalin devoted special attention to the secret agent service.”200 The personnel of the UShPD’s Intelligence (2nd) Department were permanently limited to between five and eight people, together with technical personnel. However, despite the constant moves, between June and September 1942 the Intelligence Department selected, trained and sent out 11 deputy commanders to large units and detachments responsible for intelligence. In addition, by 1 October 1942, three separate reconnaissance-sabotage groups numbering 28 people were dispatched to the German rear, as well as 28 agents and couriers for communicating with detachments and carrying out intelligence missions. Initially, these measures did not produce the desired result. On 29 October 1942 the Intelligence Department of the TsShPD reproached its Ukrainian colleagues for the fact that, despite earlier comments and directives, the information sent from the Ukrainian Staff was marred by shortcomings: Your intelligence reports often include unverified data about the enemy; information that was included in previous reports is repeated; when information about the enemy is provided, often … the timeframe to which the data refer is not indicated, the source of information [and] the location of detected objects of sabotage (supply bases, airfields, and the like) are not indicated, there is no orientation on large populated areas according to the cardinal points.201

In early 1943 the intelligence and counterintelligence services in the main forces of the UShPD were restructured. Whereas in 1942 intelligence gathering in the majority of partisan detachments in Ukraine was headed by the chief of staff, in early 1943 the post of deputy commander of intelligence was introduced. His duties included controlling all types of intelligence gathering (secret intelligence and military), as well as counterintelligence. Deputy commanders of intelligence were subordinated to the commander of the corresponding unit and to the head of the UShPD’s Intelligence Department—and directly to Tymofii Strokach. Detachments subordinated to UShPD missions at the fronts sent their intelligence data to the heads of the intelligence department of those missions.202 Between 14 October 1942 and 23 March 1943, 35 deputy commanders of intelligence, ranging in rank from junior lieutenant of state security to major of state security, were sent to the main detachments and large units of the UShPD as well as the newly formed groups of those organizing the partisan struggle. Strokach’s attempts to obtain army intelligence

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The Main Directions of Red Partisan Activities  •  117 specialists from the Red Army leadership failed. In 1942–44 the UShPD dispatched 68 deputy commanders of intelligence to partisan formations based in Soviet Ukraine. Despite this, between October 1942 and the summer of 1943 an additional 18 separate intelligence-sabotage groups, totaling 93 people, were sent to the enemy’s deep and close rear zones. With the partisans’ expansion of a secret-agent network in cities and railway points, as well as the creation of intelligence subunits in the main units, an increasing volume of intelligence information was sent to the Red Army and other interested departments. The Intelligence Directorate of the General Staff of the Red Army and the GRU sent requests for data pertaining both to general problems (the political system, the economic situation, etc.) and specific questions (the disposition of divisions, intensity of transportation via a specific railway branch line, etc.) to the Intelligence Department of the UShPD, which in turn sent them to partisan detachments. The partisans were also assigned missions by the Intelligence Directorate of the Main Naval Staff of the Naval Fleet of the USSR to study the situation on the Dnipro, Prypiat, and Western Buh rivers, and by the Staff of Railway Troops, and the Main Directorate of Military-Reconstruction Works of the People’s Commissariat of Defence of the USSR to study the functioning of railways and the organization and structure of the enemy’s railway troops.203 Requests for information also came from the 4th Directorate of the NKVD USSR. However, even by mid-1943 it was by no means always the case that transmission of “information from local areas” intelligence reports followed the correct procedures: The Intelligence Departamen [of the UShPD] assigned the command of detachments the task of gathering intelligence data in a timely fashion and its timely transmission to the UShPD, since otherwise the most valuable intelligence report, not delivered, loses its value […] every commander [detachment] was assigned the task of indicating the source of the report, the degree of reliability, as well as to orient the target of reconnaissance accurately.204

The running of human intelligence operations in local areas was directed with the help of directives transmitted by radio, the summoning of individual members of the partisan intelligence service to the Intelligence (2nd) Department of the UShPD, and the inspection of the state of secret intelligence work by employees of the Intelligence Department of the UShPD, who would fly into the Wehrmacht’s rear zone.

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118  •  Stalin’s Commandos An operative section consisting of several residents, each of whom communicated with three to 12 agents, was subordinated to deputy commanders of intelligence in large units. A resident selected individuals for possible recruitment, maintained contact with secret agents, and assigned tasks to them. The operative section also included agents who were subordinated directly to the commander of intelligence and carried out his instructions. As a rule, these individuals—mostly women—were recruited from the ranks of partisans. Every commander of a company or sabotage group within a partisan detachment also maintained contact with a number of local inhabitants, who helped him carry out his combat missions and supplied information. They were not connected with intelligence service personnel; that is, they were not subordinated to the deputy commander of intelligence of a large unit and not designated to serve as agents—even though they were, in truth, agents. They were not asked to sign a document about collaboration but were assigned specific tasks of an intelligence nature. Agents were also used in the capacity of agitators: as disseminators of printed materials (newspapers, leaflets), or conducting “whispering propaganda.” The partisans recruited secret agents not on the basis of their ideological qualities but their connection, directly or through family, to the Soviet system. As was mentioned in a note drafted by the German rear-zone units in 1942, the Soviet secret-agent reserve consisted of relatives of the forest soldiers: “Partisans … drop by to visit their families and obtain information about the strength of the police, the German Wehrmacht, weapons, etc. For the most part, these statements are obligingly offered by relatives. The more partisan families live in a village the greater the frequency of attacks. From the moment these families are removed, the number of attacks drops.”205 Aleksei Artamonov, deputy commander of intelligence in the Karmeliuk Detachment of the Kamianets-Podilsky Mikhailov unit, also mentioned a similar special group: “Especially families of people whose children had been taken into the Red Army [were recruited] … They were always on our side … Sons, children.”206 According to Artamonov, in a number of cases the partisans issued food to these agents, including the wives, mothers and sisters of Red Army soldiers. Pleas about “blood relatives” and “friends” had an impact even on policemen: One man’s brother … was serving in the Red Army; he gravitated toward us … But he had been mobilized into the police … With him was a friend, also a good guy … So I sensed that one could have dealings with them, and after they completed a couple of assignments, then I

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The Main Directions of Red Partisan Activities  •  119 believed in their loyalty. There was a certain Klyn … and there was a police station. And those two lads told us about it. That there would be a wedding of a certain [policeman] on such and such a date, and all the policemen would be there at this wedding […] So, about twenty policemen gathered at this wedding. Well, we surrounded this house, showered it with grenades; some of them managed to leave, but many of those policemen were left there, blown up. This was the first trial run; we now believed that they [the two recruited policemen—A.G.] could be trusted.207

The second category of potential informants for the partisans comprised former leading party and Soviet activists, who had concealed their pasts from the occupation authorities. “[Other agents] told us: ‘That one was in the party; that one was in the Komsomol.’” Artamonov once jokingly described how he would recruit members: I would come and say very cautiously: “Dear Sasha, there is information that you were a member of the Komsomol.” And [you would say] in fright: “No …” [But I would say]: “I have information that at such and such a time you … were even a very active Komsomol member!” That’s it. Then I went off to “put the frighteners.” And I see that Sasha is already giving in. Well, one could frighten him a bit. “Let’s say you were in the Komsomol; so we will prepare some kind of denunciation against you and release it to the police or the Germans.” There were favorite methods […] Persuasion and some kind of facilitating information, as they say, were sufficient in order to recruit [someone].208

On 8 May 1942 the commander of Einsatsgruppe C informed the Reich Main Security Office that the partisan intelligence service in Eastern Ukraine was recruiting its informants by force: “In the majority of cases, people yielded to the duty to conduct espionage under noticeable pressure; large numbers of criminals [obviously, including “traitors”—A.G.] were promised a repeal of their sentence, monetary incentives, and medals—as a prospect. Voluntary participation, once they fully realized the risk, is recorded only in exceptional cases.”209 Sometimes, methods used to persuade future agents were notable in their simplicity and resoluteness. Posing as a Volksdeutsche, Riva Braiter, who worked at the gendarmerie in a village in the Zhytomyr oblast, recalled that in 1943 partisans took her into the forest and threatened to kill her unless she agreed to steal ammunition for them from the gendarmes and Schutzmanns. The “People’s Avengers” also directed Riva to tell her landlady

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120  •  Stalin’s Commandos that if she told the Germans about their nocturnal visit, “We will burn her out!”210 According to the statements provided by the intelligence officer Leonid Bernshtein, when the partisans of the Chernihiv-Volyn unit were grooming collaborators, a girl who was sent on a mission “managed to meet with the chief of police and pass him a letter from the partisans: ‘We will shoot 16 of your relatives whom we have taken as hostages.’ And the chief of police handed over all the necessary information […] And if this had not happened, the partisans would have kept their word.”211 Not infrequently agents were supplied with valuables, including pieces of jewelry or money, in order to recruit a person or help the agent carry out an assignment, for example, to bribe his way out of having his documents inspected or to offer a bribe to an official for the purpose of obtaining information from him, with no recruitment in mind. According to the secretary of the underground Sumy oblast party committee, P. Kumaniok, an age-old method of obtaining the services of the occupation authorities was also employed: “The most useful thing is to take beautiful girls for this work. We know of such a case in Shostka, where a girl became involved with the mayor; she obtained the right of passage to Kyiv and back; she was in Kyiv twice and brought us very valuable information. In Kyiv she also had contacts with the high-ranking leadership.”212 Operations that took place on occupied territory were facilitated by fabricated documents, prepared crudely and locally, or sent from the mainland, to which the partisans had access. For this purpose, a special technical department was created by the Intelligence Department of the UShPD. Its services were also employed by intelligence directorates of various fronts and other institutions that were engaged in the struggle behind the front line. The operatives of the UShPD’s Intelligence Department considered the recruitment of “Ania,” the secretary of the German administration in Galicia District, as one of their best achievements. She was recruited in May 1944 by the intelligence officers of the Khrushchev Detachment commanded by Shangin. According to “Ania,” she was personally acquainted with Governor Otto Wechter and Governor-General Hans Frank, as well as with the leader of the Melnykite faction of the OUN, Andrii Melnyk, and the head of the Ukrainian Central Committee Volodymyr Kubijovič. Despite this supposed large number of contacts, she transmitted only the following pieces of information to the UShPD: 1. about the location of Hitler’s main headquarters near the village of Dunkovytsi [there were two bunkers in this village near the city of Peremyshl, but neither served as Hitler’s headquarters—A.G.];

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The Main Directions of Red Partisan Activities  •  121 2. the location of the headquarters of Field Marshal Erich von Manstein; 3. information about the receipt of weapons and ammunition from the Germans by UPA subunits [this information was sent to the UShPD and other channels—A.G.]; 4. intelligence data on the Germans’ preparations to break through the front line in the vicinity of Volodymyr-Volynsky.214

It is difficult to call the acquisition of such facts an outstanding example of successful secret agent work. In other words, initially the partisans of the UShPD were unable to gather substantial intelligence data on the enemy in any real fashion because of the low caliber of their very first agents. Strokach’s subordinates worked more “in breadth.” To one degree or another the intelligence network of Saburov’s large unit elucidated events that were taking place in seven oblasts located in Ukraine and Belarus: from Kyiv in the east to Brest in the west, and from Minsk in the north to Vinnytsia in the south.215 Agents were sent to penetrate Generalkommissariats, the Reichskommissariat Ukraine, raion administrations, various industrial enterprises in cities, the police, and other collaborationist formations, as well as the OUN underground and the ranks of the UPA, including raionlevel command personnel and the Polish AK. During the war detachments and large units of the UShPD and its agencies at the fronts recruited 1,307 agents.216 (This number does not include the unregistered—and far larger—number of the partisans’ “trusted individuals,” mentioned above, who were not trained as agents.) An even larger number (1,978) consisted of individuals who served as “penetration agents” or informants based in the very ranks of partisan detachments.217 Beginning in March 1944 the Intelligence Department of the UShPD set about creating individual mounted reconnaissance detachments, and six were immediately formed from already existing large units. They were equipped with a transmitter-receiver and directly subordinated to the Intelligence Department of the UShPD. Each detachment fluctuated between 25 and 150 people, and at least half of the personnel were armed with automatic weapons. The detachments operated against objectives based in Western and Transcarpathian Ukraine, Poland, and Slovakia, and they were rather effective on the whole. Technical intelligence gathering was also carried out, albeit on a fairly insignificant scale, with the use of eavesdropping devices and by recording telephone conversations and intercepting telegraph transmissions. In order to disguise the wiretapping, wires extending between 400 and 500 meters were used, which allowed listeners to distance themselves from the location of

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122  •  Stalin’s Commandos the wiretap while working the apparatus. A special group transporting such equipment was sent to the enemy’s rear in Ukraine’s Polissia region on 5 June 1943. From 5 June until October information about railway transport work was obtained, as well as about the Gebietskommissariat’s arrangements for carrying out agricultural work and the directives of the military authorities concerning anti-partisan operations.218 An underground high-frequency cable, which was discovered on the Kyiv–Zhytomyr–Rivne highway, was not utilized for operational purposes because the technical equipment necessary for tapping into it was not delivered on time. Despite the above-mentioned shortcomings of the intelligence informa­ tion supplied by partisan detachments, intelligence reports and other types of documents were sent to front commanders, the Red Army’s Intelligence Directorate, the CC CP(B)U, and occasionally to the NKVD. The table below offers some idea of the number of dispatches that were sent “from local areas” to the Intelligence Department of the UShPD, and of the informational materials that were compiled on their basis.219 Table 1. Data for the Work of the 2nd Department (Intelligence) of the UShPD

Wireless messages to the Intelligence (2nd) Department UShPD Intelligence reports issued by the 2nd Department of the UShPD and its representative agencies at the fronts Special announcements issued by the 2nd Department of the UShPD Thematic reports issued by the 2nd Department of the UShPD Memoranda issued by the Intelligence Department of the UShPD Prisoner interrogation reports Reports on the questioning of individuals who left the Wehrmacht’s rear zone

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1942

1943

1944

Total

165

1,260

1,379

2,804

33

227

200

460

2

18

16

36

43

12

12

67

14

14

9

37

11

10

3

24

20

13

21

54

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The Main Directions of Red Partisan Activities  •  123 Also arriving at the Intelligence Department of the UShPD were occupation press and trophy materials. For example, during a battle near Kovel in late February 1944 the Chernihiv-Volyn partisan unit crushed the 2nd Battalion of the 17th Separate SS Police Regiment, capturing all its staff documents, which were forwarded to the UShPD. According to the UShPD’s own data, its Intelligence Department alone, excluding its representative agencies at the fronts, sent the following materials to corresponding directorates of the Red Army and state security bodies: 9,000 sheets of German directives, instructions, orders, and similar documents; 1,200 passports, attestations, and passes in German and other languages; 230 seals and stamps; 5,000 soldiers’ and officers’ books from various types of armies; more than 500 letters written by enemy military personnel; and 200 photographs of operational interest.220 Besides the UShPD’s above-mentioned “respondents,” the UShPD also often sent the intelligence information obtained by a single partisan detachment to another detachment, either for information or reverification purposes. In 1943–44 the Intelligence (2nd) Department of the UShPD sent 1,165 wireless messages of various kinds to partisan detachments. The partisans shared their intelligence information with others in nearby large units and detachments. The intelligence service system of the UShPD and its representative agencies at the fronts also included intelligence officers operating independently, who were dispatched to the enemy rear on special missions.221 Data obtained via intelligence gathering by large partisan units and detachments pertained to the enemy’s military status, including troop disposition, defensive structures, airfields, battle spirits, and the political situation in Wehrmacht units. Attention was focused on the Germans’ preparations for chemical warfare, and the partisans repeatedly sent incorrect information about the operational application of this type of weapon. In reality, no such cases were recorded in 1941–44. These documents also described the economy in the Germans’ rear areas, the location of storehouses and bases, industrial work and the state of agriculture, the system in the occupied territory, the terror waged by the occupation authorities, and the state of transport, bridges, and the punitive and police organs. The latter were of interest to intelligence officers not only as an inert source for acquiring information. Operations aimed at smashing collaborationist units or drawing them over to the partisans’ side were assigned specifically to the intelligence services of detachments and large units. The first important success of this kind took place in Esman, an urban-type village located in Hlukhiv raion, Sumy oblast, where several

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124  •  Stalin’s Commandos commanders of the 136th Ukrainian Guard Battalion decided to go over to the partisans because of the Red Army’s recent victories and their poor treatment at the hands of the Germans. All of them were recruited by the partisan intelligence service. Six men whom the Germans suspected of being traitors, including two commanders, fled to the woods. On 10 January 1943 the police, Germans, and Hungarians surrounded the building where the battalion was housed, disarmed the people inside and, according to information provided by partisan intelligence officers, shot 150 fighters.222 A female resident reported that as many as 217 collaborators were executed that day.223 The survivors were extremely demoralized by the deaths of their fellow soldiers. After the Soviet victory at Stalingrad the 2nd Department of the UShPD formulated a special instruction about the use of former collaborators. Former village elders and policemen were now to be used “for sabotage work, for killing important traitors, for demoralizing fascist formations.” There were also examples of former collaborators being used successfully in operations. One such incident took place in the summer of 1942 in Russia’s Smolensk region, where a vigilant police detachment was in charge of guarding the railroad. Some partisans captured a policeman, who later agreed to cooperate with them. He was loaded up with mines and given a number of letters addressed to well-known traitors. Not far from the railroad the policeman “suddenly blew himself up with a mine” [the quotation marks are in the original documents—A.G.]. His corpse was quickly discovered by the Germans. Explosive materials, explosive devices, and letters were found on him. The Germans shot a few of his close acquaintances. The detachment was removed from guarding the railway sector.224

The UShPD felt a particular surge of pride in its scheme to discredit the Cossack division that had begun forming from the nucleus of existing units in Taganrog in the spring of 1943. The Cossack officer Oleksii Sereda, who in 1942 had commanded a combat detachment of the auxiliary police in Rostov (Russia), was used for this operation. After being captured by the Soviets, Sereda agreed to cooperate with them. He was charged with delivering provocative letters behind the front line and sending them to the command personnel of a number of Cossack commanders. In the early hours of 1 May 1943 Lieutenant-Colonel Mikhailov, head of the Intelligence Department of the UShPD’s representative agency attached to the Military Council of the South-western Front, flew to the German rear together with the “agent.” The latter was not aware that his parachute was

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The Main Directions of Red Partisan Activities  •  125 rigged not to open, in order to convince the Germans that found his body to believe the information they found. In the condemned man’s knapsack were letters written by the relatives of various Cossacks fighting in the war. The disinformation contained in these letters was encrypted with the aid of hydroquinone, and it consisted of information approving the plan to mount an anti-German uprising. Sereda was thrown out of the plane over Taganrog Peninsula, 15 kilometers from Taganrog. According to UShPD data, in mid-May 1943 Cossack formations from Taganrog were dispatched to the deep rear instead of the front, where they were used as construction and guard units.225 As a rule, no more than 50 men tended to go over to the partisans at any one time. Most turncoats abandoned their posts in small groups or alone. As soon as they came to a detachment, turncoats—and others—were vetted. According to the records of the Intelligence Department of UShPD, between 1942 and 1945 partisan counterintelligence agents exposed “9,883 people as spies, traitors, and other accomplices of the German aggressors, 1,998 of whom were spies.”226 The partisans shot 2,927 of them, including 930 enemy agents operating in partisan detachments, 68 civilian agents, 139 “traitors” in partisan detachments, and 1,790 agents who had been recruited among the population.227 Quite often counterintelligence agents, who were accustomed to killing, shot potentially valuable agents found among turncoats who could have been recruited and used in the protracted “game” with the enemy.228 For example, State Security Captain Havryliuk, who served for ten months in 1943–44 as the deputy of Mikhail Naumov, the commander of a large unit of Ukrainian mounted partisan detachments, and who was highly esteemed by the latter for his professionalism, believed that counterintelligence was generally not necessary for the unit. Reinforcements were vetted by the partisans by various means, including by questioning local people, and ensuring the partisans’ fighting spirit and loyalty to the Soviet system were up to par. The propaganda waged by both the Germans and the Banderites did not have any significant impact on them.229 It may be supposed that, on the whole, the level of military and secret intelligence gathering that was carried out by detachments and large units of the UShPD was somewhat higher than in UPA detachments230 but palpably lower than in the Polish AK. Even though the general volume of data obtained by the partisans of the UShPD in 1942–44 and sent from behind the front line to the Red Army command was substantial, the value of this information was not that high. Extant, fragmentary documentary data about Strokach’s main competitors indicate the following: if one compares the UShPD’s figures

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126  •  Stalin’s Commandos to the combined number and, most importantly, to the quality of the data forwarded to the Center by intelligence agents and detachments of the NKVD–NKGB of the Ukrainian SSR, NKVD–NKGB USSR, and the Red Army’s intelligence agencies operating in Ukraine, then the UShPD’s successes were relatively modest. Havryliuk, Naumov’s deputy, was convinced that the potential of UShPD detachments was being tapped only partially: To a significant extent, the lack of intelligence officers stymied the realization of the tremendous opportunities that beckoned … The presence of operational reconnaissance groups at a large unit’s base would have allowed [us] to carry out a significant number of complex recruitments, secret agent schemes, to acquire a valuable foreign intelligence service, to take root in the enemy’s army and state agencies, inasmuch as the assignment of an agent in the enemy rear more easily produces results in comparison with the same operation in the Soviet rear [i.e. from the Soviet rear]. At the same time, an operational group carrying out all kinds of complex secret intelligence schemes is not exposed to serious danger.231

During the war the acquisition of the first high-caliber agents, especially taking into account the mobility of detachments, was not the main goal of sabotage formations. Until May 1943 the most powerful and combative large unit in Ukraine—Kovpak’s—had a very poorly organized intelligence service, and after Vershyhora’s appointment as deputy commander of intelligence its performance remained mediocre. On the whole, the UShPD partisans had sufficient military intelligence required for carrying out their main tasks (including raids): inspection of the territory, information obtained from prisoners of war, as well as superficial questioning of the population.

“‘T’ Assignments” The resolution of these main tasks requires the broad launch of partisan combat operations by all partisan detachments, as well as of sabotage, terrorist, and intelligence work in the enemy rear. Joseph Stalin, fragment from Order No. 00189 concerning the partisan activities, 5 September 1942

Terrorism—that is, the planning of political violence and intimidation—as a mass phenomenon in the modern era was first implemented by citizens

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The Main Directions of Red Partisan Activities  •  127 of the Russian Empire, including the Bolsheviks, who did not disdain such methods even before they came to power.232 In Soviet internal documentation the process of carrying out terrorist acts was designated by the letter “T.” Occasionally, euphemisms were employed, such as the phrases “extermination actions” and “extermination group.” Such actions were usually not perpetrated by combatants, and it was even rarer that they were targeted against combatants; they also did not have any military significance. The principal goal was not to divert the Wehrmacht’s forces from the front; instead, according to the organizers’ thinking, acts of violence and intimidation were supposed to sow horror in the ruling organization of the enemy. The liquidation of important collaborators, high-ranking officials of the civilian administration, and officers of the Wehrmacht and the SS was a priority for the Soviet state security organs. For the secret agents and fighters of the UShPD and the army intelligence service, “‘T’ assignments” were missions of secondary and tertiary importance. However, since there is greater significance to this topic nowadays, owing to the current era of terrorism, a brief description of some well-known “special measures” that were implemented by all three institutions is offered below. *** The largest number of highly qualified specialists that carried out notorious contract murders during the war years was within, and subordinated to, the 4th Directorate of the NKVD USSR (after April 1943, to the NKGB), which controlled the “legendary” Independent Special Purpose Motorized Rifle Brigade, known by its Russian acronym OMSBON. In addition to an independently functioning intelligence service, 22 subunits233 directly subordinated to Pavel Sudoplatov operated in the Ukrainian SSR and the Crimean Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic (ASSR) in 1941–44, as revealed by a postwar KGB note. Most of them were assigned terrorist missions. Before the Red Army withdrew from Odesa, a special group “Fort”, under the command of Captain of State Security Vladimir Molodtsov234 (codenamed “Badaev”), was stationed in the city’s catacombs and equipped with a transmitter-receiver for communicating with Moscow. As the detachment’s liaison, Yakiv Hordiienko, testified during his imprisonment by the Romanians, “When I was leaving the catacomb, Badaev told me to inform Boikov [the detachment’s Odesa-based resident—A.G.] to compel his people to act more intensively and carry out terrorist acts, especially against command personnel.”235 Badaev, who was under investigation, recounted only one attempt to carry out a significant terrorist act: “Of the concrete missions obtained by several members of

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128  •  Stalin’s Commandos the group, it is necessary to mention the preparation for an explosion in the German consulate […] I do not know … whether anything was undertaken in this direction.”236 The group killed two agents suspected of working for the Romanians. According to A. Fedorovich (“Boikov”), Molodtsov constantly urged him to kill other “provocateurs,” whose names and places of residence—though occasionally only their surnames—had been sent via wireless messages from Moscow.237 On 18 November 1941 “Badaev’s” detachment blew up a passenger train filled with German officers and officials, and in February 1942 another train was derailed. In the first days of 1942 Molodtsov was arrested by the Romanian Sigurant¸a when he was leaving the catacombs one day to search for food. After an investigation and trial he was executed in July 1942. On 5 November 1944 Molodtsov was posthumously awarded the title of Hero of the Soviet Union. As noted earlier, there is a theory that the detonation of the Dormition Cathedral at the Kyivan Cave Monastery on 3 November 1941 was an unsuccessful attempt to assassinate President Tiso of Slovakia. German documents contain other examples pointing to the Soviets’ failures in central Ukraine.238 In June 1942 the Pobediteli (“Victors”) group led by Dmitrii Medvedev was deployed to the Zhytomyr region with the assignment to reach the vicinity of Rivne. According to the testimony of the group’s physician, Albert Tsessarsky, they were carrying performance-enhancing drugs that had been tested during training held earlier in the Soviet rear. The doctor himself had used this doping one time during his stay on occupied territory.239 In the fall of 1942 the group was joined by Nikolai Kuznetsov, who was fluent in German and operated in Rivne under the guise of the German officer “Paul Siebert.” According to Sudoplatov, thanks to the efforts of the Pobediteli group, an impressive network was created in Western Ukraine within two years: “Sixty-three fighter agents were recruited, through whom the higher German administration, Reichskommissariat Ukraine, was terrorized.”240 According to the testimony of Medvedev’s own men, they blew up two officers’ casinos as well as the Rivne train station; in addition, “the following terrorist actions were carried out” in the capital of Reichskommissariat Ukraine, “during which the [following] were killed: 1. [On 21 September 1943, on a street by a bullet fired from a pistol, Hans] Gel, director of the [Finance] Department of Reichskommissariat [Ukraine], ministerial counselor.

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The Main Directions of Red Partisan Activities  •  129 2. [Together with him, Adolf] Winter, financial advisor of the [Rivne] Gebietskommissariat. 3. [On 15 November 1943 abducted and later killed, Maks] Ilgen [Max Ilgen], Major-General, Commander of Special Forces troops in Ukraine [this is a faulty translation; Ilgen was in fact the commander of the propaganda-recruiting and records subunit of the Wehrmacht Department of the Eastern Armies—A.G.] 4. [On 16 November 1943 by a shot fired from a pistol], Alfred Funk, chairman of the German Supreme Court in Ukraine, the former extraordinary commissar of Memelsk oblast.241

On 30 September 1943, not far from Rivne, Kuznetsov threw a grenade at the car in which Paul Dargel, first deputy of Erich Koch, was traveling; as a result, Dargel lost both legs. In Galicia “on 10 February 1944, in the city of Lviv, N. I. Kuznetsov fired his pistol, killing the deputy governor of Galicia, Dr. [Otto] Bauer [right in front of his apartment] and his secretary, Dr. Schneider ... Kuznetsov killed the German officer, Major Kanter, the driver of the car in which Kuznetsov and his companions had driven from Lviv ... Situated in Galicia, N. I. Kuznetsov shot Peters, a Lieutenant-Colonel in the air force.”242 All these “operations” were carried out by Nikolai Kuznetsov, who was awarded the title of Hero of the Soviet Union after his death. Other fighting groups were subordinated to the Pobediteli group. In his memoirs Tsessarsky told that the members of Medvedev’s intelligence service went “off the rails” to such an extent that, as a result of a disagreement, Kuznetsov was nearly poisoned, the attempt on his life “collapsing” at the very last moment.243 As the head of the NKGB informed Stalin in February 1944, Medvedev’s men carried out a few more large-scale actions in Rivne: On 3 January of this year [1944], in the city of Rivne, Pavel Yakovlevich Serov, an agent of “Sera’s” operational group, killed a German colonel, the chief of staff of the rear-line troops in Ukraine [In all probability, the report exaggerates the officer’s position—A.G.]. In connection with the operational group’s departure to the west, it was impossible to establish the surnames of the murdered chief of staff. On 5 January of this year a group of agents headed by Terentii Fedorovych Novak set off an explosive device in an officers’ dining room in the city of Rivne … Seven high-ranking officers of the command staff of the German army were killed … Up to 70 officers and military officials were killed and wounded … The agents who carried out the

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130  •  Stalin’s Commandos operation to blow up the dining room returned safely to the operational group base. That same day agents of the operational group Terentii Novak … and Serafim Afonin … used mines to blow up a train carrying “Volksdeutscher” evacuees, which was traveling from Zdolbuniv to Rivne. As a result of the explosion, the train was wrecked. There are many killed and wounded.244

In reality, this report somewhat exaggerates Novak’s feats. In 1966 a former member of Medvedev’s unit, Mykola Strutynsky, sent a letter to the director of the Institute of Marxism-Leninism at the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Ukraine, which was critical of Novak’s book Poedinok (Single Combat). Strutynsky wrote: In late 1943 a mine was set off in a soldiers’ cafeteria on Nimetska Street in the city of Rivne … Novak told the detachment commander that the exploding mine destroyed several German generals, many officers, and soldiers … This is a bald-faced lie […] In reality, the exploding mine severely wounded two people: a rank-and-file soldier, a Vlasovite, and Chernetsky, who was carrying out our assignments from the main command, where he worked as a bootmaker.245

In reply to the question about the psychological traits possessed by the perpetrators of such acts, the former Medvedite, physician, and writer Albert Tsessarsky delivered the following tirade: “They were all dashing fellows … We were defending our ideals, we were defending the fatherland. I left my wife in Moscow, that’s how I protected her … The Germans—they were semiliterate, for the most part; Ehrenburg called them one-celled [creatures].”246 In the Pobediteli (“Victors”) Detachment some of the assigned tasks targeted Polish nationalists. In May 1943 Leon Osiecki, a former officer of the Polish Army and the head of a small resistance group, together with First Lieutenant Lisiecki and a driver named Baginski, were killed in a forest ambush. Ivan Shitov, the commander of the large Khrushchev unit located nearby, sent the following cipher communication to the UShPD: “We were preparing to kill Osiecki under the Germans’ cover, but Pashun [chief of staff of the Pobediteli Detachment of the NKGB USSR], who did not coordinate with us, disposed of Osiecki in an extremely inept way, dumping his body in the forest.”247 On 5 November 1944 Medvedev was awarded the Gold Star. As the commander of the Okhotniki group, Lieutenant-Colonel of State Security Mykola Prokopiuk was dispatched to the territory of Right-Bank

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The Main Directions of Red Partisan Activities  •  131 Ukraine in August 1942, where shortly afterwards he arrived in the vicinity of the charming city of Rivne. In a message to Stalin dated 6 November 1943 Merkulov informed the Soviet leader about Prokopiuk’s achievements: “On 28 September of this year a passenger train consisting of 13 cars, 9 of which were Pullman cars, was derailed […] According to intelligence data … soldiers on leave from the front were on the train. In the train wreck no fewer than 90 people were killed and up to 300 were wounded; among those killed were supposedly nine high-ranking officers.”248 On 6 November 1943 Hryhorii Balytsky, commander of the Stalin Detachment of Fedorov’s unit that was operating in Volyn oblast, noted in his journal: “Comrade Zubko [Balytsky’s deputy—A.G.] organized the murder of Polish nationalists—they were inveterate enemies of the Soviet Motherland.”249 Obviously, this act was inspired by Prokopiuk, who was a friend of Balytsky’s. The issue here is the murder of First Lieutenant Jan Rerutko, commander of the Luna Detachment, which was operating in the Volyn region, as well as of the physician Sławomir Stetsiuk and a soldier named Jan Lynek.250 Prokopiuk had invited this group to celebrate the October Revolution anniversary, after which the Poles received a proposal to subordinate themselves to the Soviet partisans. Rerutko refused, but the two sides nevertheless carried out a mutually satisfactory exchange of weapons. The three Poles departed on a wagon—after traveling no more than 400 m, they were shot in the back and their belongings were stolen. On 5 November 1944 Prokopiuk was awarded the Gold Star. In March 1943, 50 men from Saburov’s Zhytomyr unit, which was subordinated to the UShPD, were seconded to Captain of State Security Evgenii Mirkovsky. These men formed the nucleus of the NKGB’s Khodoki (“Walkers”) Detachment. According to Soviet historians, on 1 May 1943 its Zhytomyr-based secret agents grabbed Armin, a captain of SS troops, in an officers’ dining room, along with some valuable documents. They killed him, blew up the office of Magis, the Gebietskommissar of Zhytomyr, the building that housed the editorial offices of the newspaper Holos Volyni (Voice of Volyn), and the telegraph office, sowing panic throughout the city.251 However, all attempts to locate other sources that would corroborate this series of terrorist acts have proved fruitless. The Zhytomyr-researcher Volodymyr Hinda insists that extant materials on the underground in this city do not mention any explosion at the Gebietskommissariat or the newspaper’s editorial offices. No mention was made either in the reports drafted by UShPD partisans or in any German documents, and the municipal newspaper did not report anything about this incident.252 It is still not clear what Evgenii Mirkovsky did to earn the title of Hero of the Soviet Union on 5 November 1944.

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132  •  Stalin’s Commandos In February 1943 Captain of State Security Viktor Karasev was appointed commander of the special Olimp group of the NKVD USSR, which operated first in Belarus and later in Ukraine, including Zhytomyr oblast. An operation that he carried out in the city of Ovruch is described by Soviet historians in the book Hatred Compressed in Tolite: [A secret agent of Olimp] Aleksei Botian succeeded in making contact … with Yakiv Kapliuk, the stoker of the steam boiler-room in the Kriegskommissariat [read: Gebietskommissariat—A.G.] […] The barracks of the punitive and guard detachments were located on the first floor, on the second—their headquarters, services, and officers’ bedrooms, on the third—the offices and apartments of Gebietskommissar Wenzel and his deputies, the Gestapo, the bedrooms of high-ranking officers. The Center [probably Sudoplatov himself—A.G.] approved the plan of the operation and for this purpose sent two planeloads of explosive materials to the detachment […] Over and over again Ya. Kapliuk … covered the 40-km route from Ovruch to the detachment’s camp, from where he brought the tolite to his house. His wife and children carried the tolite in batches, along with a lunch, to the boiler-room […] Gradually, 150 kg of tolite accumulated underneath the coal […] On 14 September 1943 Ya. Kapliuk set up an explosive device with a timing mechanism and left the building of the Kriegskommissariat … Two hours later the small town was shaken by a colossal explosion […] Beneath the rubble of the building were the bodies of more than 40 German officers as well as various officials of the military and civilian administrations, many soldiers. Six coffins with the remains of high-ranking individuals arrived in Berlin.253

A trip to Ovruch undertaken by a working group on 18 November 2009 helped determine the fact that no destruction of the Gebietskommissariat had ever taken place. First of all, the building that was blown up was not an administrative one but a residential building containing 32 apartments. Second, this building was rebuilt after the war, since only part of it had been destroyed. Third, a female eyewitness reported that she was personally acquainted with Yakiv Kapliuk, who told her that he blew up the building where the Germans were living at a time when there were no Germans there, and that there were absolutely no victims.254 These statements were indirectly corroborated by the testimony of another female resident of Ovruch, who could not recall any shootings of hostages,255 the Germans’ standard measures following the death of any of their compatriots. At the same time, however, the Karasevites’ “work” against the Armia Krajowa was entirely real. On 19–20 December a merry drinking spree

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The Main Directions of Red Partisan Activities  •  133 took place in a settlement in the Rivne region, among whose participants was a group of Polish officers, including a lieutenant colonel codenamed “Wujek” (Kochanski), Colonel of Soviet State Security Bohun, Captain of State Security Viktor Karasev, as well as Major-General Mikhail Naumov, commander of a large cavalry unit of the UShPD, who, perplexed, wrote the following entry in his journal two days later: “Wujek and his staff and officer personnel disappeared without a trace … The detachment fell apart and, after abandoning three wounded men and those sick with typhus, it wandered off.” The next day Naumov provided the name of the person who had abducted the Polish officers: “In Shitov’s unit they are saying openly that this business is the work of ‘Karas.’”256 Kochanski’s group was captured, some of its members were executed, and the rest were sent to Moscow, where eight men were freed following a trial. Kochanski himself was given a 25-year prison sentence.257 On 5 November 1944 Viktor Karasev was awarded the Gold Star. The main terrorist acts perpetrated by OMSBON were carried out in 1943–44, during the final year of the German occupation. This may be explained partly by the expanding activities of the NKGB and the rise of the organized nature and professionalism of the Soviet emissaries of death. In 1943–44 the Germans, too, were expanding their secret-agent network, accumulating experience and adapting to their various locales. Changes in the public mood were also behind the successes of the “liquidators.” After the Red Army’s victories at Kursk, increasingly fewer people were prepared to bind their destinies to the losing side, and more and more Ukrainians were ready to take part in destroying the representatives of German rule. *** In all probability, the NKVD apparatus of the Ukrainian SSR, unlike the central organs of state security, was utterly prepared to carry out terrorist missions in the German rear by 22 June 1941. At the same time, detachments and commanders who were still in the rear-line areas were expected to carry out a huge range of missions. In a report summarizing the entire war period prepared by the 4th Directorate of the NKGB of the Ukrainian SSR, there is a dash placed opposite the year 1941 in the column entitled “Liquidated Prominent Anti-Soviet Activists and Members of the Command Personnel of German Armies.” However, attempts to assassinate the editors of collaborationist newspapers and leading figures of the local administration in Ukrainian cities and villages, to burn houses where Germans were billeted, including staff headquarters, to commit acts of arson in inhabited areas, where there was a concentration of enemy troops, were still undertaken.258 In early 1942 the 4th Department of the NKVD drafted plans to liquidate

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134  •  Stalin’s Commandos policemen, including former members of the militia, the mayors of Kharkiv and Donetsk, and the director of the Kryvorizhstal factory.259 Some of these terrorists were only 16 or 17 years old,260 and after a two-week training period they were sent into the rear area of the Wehrmacht, where their missions collapsed. In the summer of 1942 announcements sent to the NKVD of the Ukrainian SSR about the terrorists’ failures arrived even from southern Bessarabia.261 However, after the Red Army returned, there was proof that some sleeper-agent “frozen cells” were active. One of them was Roman Holovaty (codenamed “Doroshenko”), the former head of the Chemistry Department at the Stalin Medical Institute, who had been left in place in Stalino (Donetsk) in October 1941: After the arrival of the Germans in the city of Stalino … he began working as an inspector of technical chemical control at the dairy trust … Agent “Doroshenko” appointed Elysei Mykhailovych Shymko, who had been employed as the manager of pharmacy no. 2 under the Germans, to lead one of the sabotage groups […] He formed a group of 5 people, including doctors and service personnel who worked in the German hospital. At various times the participants of this group infected an instrument and dressing material by means of desterilization and used it in this form during operations and the dressing of wounds, which caused fatalities among the wounded officers and soldiers of the German army … As a result of the Shymko group’s activities, by late June 1943 up to 100 German soldiers and officers had been done away with […] In late December 1942 “Doroshenko” organized a second sabotage group in the city of Stalino, appointing as its head Professor Nikolai Andreevich Nikolsky, who was the director of a chemical laboratory. In February 1943 a German truck with two barrels of beer and wine drove into the courtyard of the laboratory where Nikolsky worked. Taking advantage of the fact that the truck was not guarded, Nikolsky poured arsenic into the barrel of beer and potassium cyanide into the barrel of wine … This truck left the city of Stalino together with retreating enemy units. Agent “Doroshenko,” who in February 1943 was on a business trip to the butter factory in Olhyne, together with Slatin, the foreman of this factory, put mercuric chloride into two barrels of butter that were later sent to a German unit. According to Shulhyn, the manager of the milk-fat enterprise, agent “Doroshenko” was aware that up to fifty Germans and Italians had

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The Main Directions of Red Partisan Activities  •  135 been poisoned in the district of Volnovakha; “Doroshenko” believes this happened as a result of poisoned butter having been used in the food … In May 1943 agent “Doroshenko” used arsenic to poison cheese curd that was being prepared for the officer personnel of the German army. Later he found out from that same Shulhyn that some officers in the city of Mariupil had been poisoned by the cheese curd mixture, that the Germans had attributed [the poisoning] to the poor quality of the cheese curd.262

According to the work of two contemporary researchers, under Holovaty’s leadership, an underground “troika” consisting of the physician Evheniia Bova and nurses operated in the clinic [modern-day Kalinin Clinic], where the occupiers’ military hospital was situated … As mentioned in … the report of the UNKGB [Upravlenie NKGB] dated 20.12.43, the underground members physically destroyed more than a hundred Hitlerites … This was achieved by doing away with the seriously wounded by anesthesia, deliberate blood poisoning (sepsis), and insufficient care in the presence of gas gangrene.263

After the occupation ended, both Holovaty and Shymko received government awards.264 As noted in Savchenko’s announcement to Sudoplatov, during the first year and a half of the war the NKVD of the Ukrainian SSR dispatched 2,027 solo intelligence agents to the occupied territory, who were assigned to carry out one-off missions of a reconnaissance nature, as well as couriers who communicated with these agents. A total of 408 (20 per cent) returned; the rest disappeared. In addition, 595 groups, totaling 1,892 people, were sent; 34 groups, representing a total of 174 people—less than 10 per cent— returned. In early 1943 only a few pathetic remnants were left of this army of “uniformed” secret agents: “Communication is being maintained with the reconnaissance groups of ‘Luch’ numbering 5 people deployed to the vicinity of the city of Sumy, and of ‘Maisky’ numbering 4 people deployed to the vicinity of the city of Stalino. Personal communication is maintained only with a few solo agents.”265 The NKGB of the Ukrainian SSR set about deploying operational Chekist groups only in the fall of 1943. According to the Chekists’ own statements, the republic’s state security organs carried out the most significant acts in Poland. Data collected by a Polish historian during the existence of the Polish People’s Republic reveal that on 11 December 1944, near the

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136  •  Stalin’s Commandos village of Lypivka, the special Avangard group, led by Vasilii Tikhonin (codenamed “Lukich,” “Vasyl”266), used the information provided by the secret intelligence network of the left-wing resistance Armia Ludowa and killed Theodor van Eupen, the former commandant of the Treblinka concentration camp.267 According to the summarizing report issued by the NKGB of the Ukrainian SSR, on 20 January 1945 a special group codenamed “Walka” of the republican NKGB detained the prominent German protégé Wacław Krzeptowski [leader of the local separatist Górale Committee—A.G.] … and after an interrogation he admitted his treacherous activities and connections with the fascists, [and] was hanged at the crossroads of [two] main roads near the city of Zakopane […] That same day, in a restaurant in the city of Zakopane the group detained Wacław’s brother, Bolesław Krzeptowski [not an important individual even in the hierarchy of the Góralenvolk—A.G.], and shot him in the woods on the outskirts of the city of Zakopane.268

Wacław Krzeptowski was a district-level collaborator, and his “liquidation” might have been regarded as something of a success if the Red Army had not entered Zakopane nine days later. Furthermore, the very description of the operation elicits suspicion. First of all, it conceals the fact that at the time Krzeptowski was in the underground,269 and he was being hunted energetically by Polish nationalists, partisans, Soviet terrorist groups, and the German security forces. Second, there is a theory that Krzeptowski was hanged by the members of the AK’s Kurniawa Detachment,270 but at the instigation of the commander of “Walka.” In 1943–45 there were 53 operational Chekist groups of the NKGB of the Ukrainian SSR operating in the Wehrmacht’s rear. During the four-year war the 4th Directorate of the NKGB of the Ukrainian SSR, according to its reports, carried out 25 terrorist acts. The level and scale of these measures elicited praise from Sudoplatov and Khrushchev but not their admiration. The Ukrainian NKGB’s “most important task”— engineering the death by bomb of the brown-shirted satrap of Poland, Hans Frank—was never carried out. Not a single rank-and-file soldier or commander of any special unit subordinated to the Ukrainian branch of the Soviet secret police was awarded the title of Hero of the Soviet Union for measures that were carried out between the summer of 1942 and May 1945, either during the war or immediately after its conclusion. ***

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The Main Directions of Red Partisan Activities  •  137 After the UShPD was created, its associates did not forget about carrying out “liquidations” in the enemy’s rear,271 a task that had been assigned to the UShPD. Strokach’s orders to assassinate the members of Hitler’s Eastern Front military headquarters, Wolf’s Lair,272 were circulated to local areas. Plans were drafted to carry out actions in the oblast centers of central Ukraine,273 but nothing ever came of them. Terrorist missions were assigned to all deputy commanders of intelli­ gence who had been sent to the main large partisan units in 1942–43.274 The spring of 1943 coincided with the escalation of preparations for these operations. On 12 May 1943 the head of the TsShPD requested his Ukrainian colleagues to send him all existing data on Erich Koch, the Gauleiter of Ukraine.275 On 11 May, during a conversation with Robert Satanovsky, the commander of a Polish Soviet partisan detachment, his UShPD colleagues had asked him whether he knew of any local specialists in the Volyn region who were familiar with “terrorist work,”276 and whether he had any intelligent terrorists in mind. On 20 May 1943 the Intelligence Department of the Ukrainian Staff of the Partisan Movement created “T” file no. 2, entitled “Materials on Completed Terrorist Acts.”277 A week later a meeting held in the Polissia region and attended by the commanders of the seven large partisan units operating in Ukraine, the members of the CC CP(B)U, and the UShPD approved the following decision: “To intensify our work of demoralizing the enemy’s garrisons and reserve units … police and nationalistic formations. For this purpose send our agents to them, scatter leaflets and newspapers, terrorize the command personnel.”278 In connection with the launch of these missions, Strokach requested Khrushchev’s permission to use poisons,279 but poisons were never used against the indicated targets. The actions that were carried out in May 1943, about which the commanders of UShPD units reported with great bravura, are highly suspect. Since the results of these terrorist acts never made it into various summarizing reports, it is highly probable that they were simply invented by these commanders.280 All attempts to assassinate Erich Koch were stymied.281 The head of the Reichskommissariat Ukraine rarely visited Rivne and, at any rate, he was always heavily guarded. On 4 June 1943 “Brut” (“Brutus”), a terrorist planner, was flown out to the large No. 1 Unit based in Rivne under the command of V. Behma.282 Concealed behind this noteworthy codename was none other than Kirill Ogol. Unlike Nikolai Kuznetsov, “Brut” even failed to kill anyone of lower rank than Koch in the central apparatus of the Reichskommissariat Ukraine.

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138  •  Stalin’s Commandos The document entitled “The Program of Preparations by Pestupsky, the Organizer of ‘T,’” which was approved by Strokach in July 1943, is very important for the understanding of UShPD terrorism. Training consisted of three information blocks. The first was devoted to the execution of secret intelligence work. The second consisted of lessons devoted to learning about the enemy, including the German security services. The third block—the execution of terrorist acts—included five points: analysis of the “target”; the individuals around him; the recruitment of an executor and secret agents; the selection of a place and the means to carry out a terrorist act; and the concealment of all traces of the act.283 In other words, the training was complex and multifaceted, but the total time spent on training amounted to a mere 20 hours. The spring–summer terrorist campaign of 1943—launched by the UShPD in the finest Soviet traditions of last-minute rush, all-handson-deck attitude, and window dressing—did not produce any results. Moreover, during the entire period of 1942–44 Strokach’s subordinates did not manage to carry out a single noteworthy terrorist act. In terms of complexity, acts involving setting fire to pigsties or freight trains are different from, say, measures aimed at assassinating a minister of agriculture or poisoning the director of the imperial railway administration. *** Today civilian researchers have at their disposal only fragmentary reports about “liquidations” that were carried out by army secret services in occupied Ukraine. In principle, the destruction in late September 1941 of Kyiv’s historic center, described in the above section on the destruction of domestic targets, can also qualify as a terrorist act. One of the goals of that operation was to kill the members of the German army command and officials of the occupation administration, who were housed in various conveniently located buildings. A similar action, one that was carried out by means of “surgical” methods, but which achieved a greater result, was the blowing up of the oblast NKVD directorate in Odesa, which had been mined in advance. As Arkadii Khrenov writes in his memoirs, this was done by army specialists.284 After the city was occupied, Romanian sappers inspected the building and declared there was no danger. This was where Ion Glogojanu, the military commandant of Odesa (simultaneously the commander of the 10th Infantry Division), established his headquarters. It is possible that the secret agents in place there used a portable two-way radio to inform Sevastopol about the time of an operational meeting. On 22 October at 5:35 p.m. the fatal signal was sent by a Crimea-based transmitter-receiver.

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The Main Directions of Red Partisan Activities  •  139 The explosion completely destroyed the right annex and the central wing of the building. The losses totaled 135 people: 79 were killed, 43 were wounded, and 13 disappeared without a trace. Among the fatalities were 16 Romanian officers, one warrant officer, 46 soldiers, nine civilians, and seven Germans, four of whom were naval officers.285 After his death Glogojanu was promoted from brigadier general to division general. With the aid of a radio-controlled land mine activated from Voronezh, Ilya Starinov, a member of the Red Army’s Engineering Directorate, set off an explosion in Kharkiv, at the home of the first secretary of the oblast party committee, located at 17 Dzerzhinsky Street. The explosion, on 14 November 1941,286 killed two officers and 13 non-commissioned officers, as well as Major-General Georg Braun, commander of the 68th Infantry Division of the Wehrmacht,287 who was posthumously promoted to the rank of lieutenant-general. One cannot exclude the possibility that the Soviet network, which, according to German security forces reports, had carried out six assassinations in Kyiv in July and August 1942 and was destroyed by the SD, was actually subordinated to the GRU.288 In his memoirs Anton Brynsky, who had fought in Volyn, mentions a number of terrorist acts of “local importance” that took place in 1943: Mined suitcases began exploding on trains … A Komsomol group led by the younger Lakhovsky tossed a grenade through a window of the Gestapo. There were dead and wounded, and the ones who had thrown the grenade hid. In Rafalivka the partisans established contact with a certain S., the station master’s translator … The station master grabbed the telephone in his office and suddenly the telephone receiver blew up in his hand.289

On 23 May 1943, during an inspection of defensive structures, a bomb went off, ripping the legs off Gasmann, the chief of the Horyn gendarmerie. Later, a similar incident at the Vydybor Station (Zhytomyr oblast) claimed the life of an officer of the 36th Hungarian Regiment. During the celebrations of the Horyn station master’s 40th birthday, partisan agents tossed two grenades through the window of his house: “Two German officers were killed by the explosions, three Germans and five traitors escaped with more or less serious wounds. And when they were burying those who were killed … the partisans managed to mine the cemetery. Once again there were killed and wounded.” After loading food supplies on a wagon and mining it, emissaries of the Intelligence Directorate of the General Staff sent it on its way without a horse to the building of the Olevsk gendarmerie. When the Germans began unloading the wagon, it

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140  •  Stalin’s Commandos blew up. “In Kovel the Komsomol member Olia Kosheleva … threw a grenade through the window of the Gestapo building … Olia’s final deed was throwing a mine into the barracks housing the Hitlerite chasteners. Fourteen fascists were killed in the explosion … The explosions thundered in Lutsk and Kivertsi—they were prepared by Lutsk-based underground members.”290 Memoirs are an unreliable source, but nonetheless it seems certain that army intelligence also engaged in terrorist acts. One story is so peculiar, even unique, that it is worth recounting in detail. In the 1920s and 1930s a doctor named Fedor Mikhailov worked in a number of hospitals located in various oblasts of the RSFSR. In 1940 he was transferred to Kamianets-Podilsky oblast in the Ukrainian SSR, where he was appointed director of the maternity hospital in the city of Slavuta. In 1941 he was called up for retraining in the Red Army, where he was based when the war broke out. In October 1941, after returning to Slavuta, Dr Mikhailov declared that he had just fled the Kyiv encirclement, after which the Germans allowed him to pursue his specialty; shortly afterwards he was appointed director of a local hospital. Taking advantage of the fact that the hospital did not have enough doctors, the former Red Navy man obtained permission to select some “loyal” doctors from among the prisoners of war being held in the nearby camp. By the end of 1941 he had created a number of secret-agent groups and controlled a small network of fighters, who had been organized by former NKVD commander Anton Odukhoi. The latter claimed that in late December a secret meeting took place in the home of the enterprising physician: “I found doctors at his place … A conference of specialist doctors had been set up; Comrade Mikhailov himself was wearing a doctor’s smock.”291 During the meeting several tasks distinguished by their scope and daring were outlined, including: “3. Preparation of the population for an armed, nation-wide uprising … 6: Development of sabotage and terrorist actions.”292 A few months later, the Germans were told about the existence of this secret intelligence network by one of its members. The SD’s report no. 19, dated 4 September 1942, spelled the end for the group’s leader: In Slavuta … we managed to liquidate a gang of plotters-intellectuals headed by Mikhailov, head doctor of the local hospital. Altogether, 15 people were arrested. Mikhailov helped those prisoners of war whom he had used to escape, and he created an armed gang out of them. He was planning to eliminate incorruptible police commanders with the aid of murders. In one case he himself tried to eliminate the police commander with poison.293

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The Main Directions of Red Partisan Activities  •  141 All those arrested, including the head physician, were hanged. However, the majority of the network was not exposed and it continued to function until the arrival of the Red Army. Furthermore, judging by German documents, the underground leader managed to conceal from the investigators the methods with which his subordinates were fighting against the occupiers. The summarizing report of the Mikhailov partisan unit based in Kamianets-Podilsky offers only a scant description of the resourcefulness of the Slavuta doctors: In January 1942 the underground committee assigned a mission to bring a full complement of prisoners of war out of the Slavuta camp … The listening of radio broadcasts, collective reading of Soviet agitational materials [and] fresh newspapers, [and] the extermination of the German guard with the aid of spotted typhus cultivated among the Germans were organized in the camp. Ampules with typhus-carrying lice destined for the Germans arrived regularly at the [Slavuta] camp from Slavuta.294

Iustyna Bonatska, who worked as a matron in the venereal division of the Slavuta hospital during the war, carried out a “medical” operation in January 1942. Next to the municipal hospital were artisans’ workshops, where German soldiers lived and worked. “Fedor Mikhailovich kept … a small box of lice and he gives it me, saying: ‘There are typhus-carrying lice in this little box […] Take it and go scatter the lice on the Germans’ beds. The Germans have to be driven out of here so that they will not bother us.’”295 Bonatska went there with a request that a rolling pin be made for her and her shoes repaired. They welcome me merrily with exclamations: “A Frau, a Frau has come …” I sat on a bed and began telling them with mimicry why I had come, that I needed a rolling pin [the original mistakenly says kachalka, “rocking chair”] for rolling out dough … I continue laughing with them, I talk with them and at the same time I opened the little box a bit and released I don’t know how many lice onto a fur coat lying on the bed next to me.296

The next day Bonatska paid another visit to the trusting joiners and shoemakers and, under the pretext of wanting to look at some of their family photographs, she made her way into a bedroom: “I turned around to

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142  •  Stalin’s Commandos make sure that they could not see what I was doing and, quickly opening the little box with the lice, I scattered them all on clothing that was hanging on a hanger.” A few days later Dr Mikhailov thanked the agent: “Well done! Yesterday evening the Germans left us; Dr Koziichuk uncovered a case of typhus among them.”297 After the war Odukha revealed that he was ordered to carry out a similar mission in late February 1942: Infecting with typhus-carrying lice and poisoning German officer-pilots and traitors of the motherland … Typhus-carrying lice were collected in test tubes in prisoner of war camps [probably in the Shepetivka camp—A.G.] and delivered for the designated purpose through medical personnel and others. I also received four test tubes with lice, potassium cyanide, mercuric chloride in pill form, morphine, and other poisonous substances.298

“Until April 1942 the group under my personel direction was engaged in sabotage in German garrisons, that is, individual terror [bioterrorism— A.G.] against German officers and German soldiers; they infected the Germans with typhus by releasing typhus-carrying lice.”299 Bonatska’s daughter Lidiia Shcherbakova (b. 1924) stated that in the spring of 1942 the manager of the Slavuta hospital, her uncle Roman Bonatsky, supplied her with a secret weapon: One day my uncle brought some kind of glass tube: “These are typhuscarrying lice. You are planning to go dancing; take them and stick them on the Germans at the dance.” I went to the dance with Halia Lys. We divided the lice among small pieces of paper … and during the dancing and intermissions in places where there were more Germans we tried to drop the small pieces of paper with the lice into a pocket or on a collar, and that’s how we scattered them.300

Ignat Kuzovkov, who was a prisoner in the Slavuta camp in 1941—and after that, the camp-guard—recalled carrying out the following directives: I selected a group of reliable comrades and through them carried out the work preparatory to bringing out the entire complement of the camp and also infecting the German garrison with typhus. We did not succeed in completing the first assignment. The second was carried out rather

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The Main Directions of Red Partisan Activities  •  143 well with the aid of typhus-carrying lice that were delivered in ampules from the Slavuta hospital. Consequently, one sergeant-major, two noncommissioned officers, and nine soldiers were destroyed.301

It is very likely that during his interrogation by the NKGB, Abram Likhtenshtein, the former translator for the Slavuta camp commandant, testified about the activities of the secret-agent group that was operating in this very camp. We must give appropriate weight to the fact that Kuzovkov and Likhtenshtein quarreled later, which explains why the latter did not enlarge upon Kuzovkov’s role: Doctor Mikhailov suggested to the [captive] Doctor Druian and one of the other doctors that they bombard the Germans with spotted typhus-carrying lice … At the time there was an epidemic of spotted typhus in the camp. Doctor Druian collected lice from a policeman who had died of spotted typhus, put them in a small box, and gave them to me. I threw these lice at a non-commissioned officer and a German soldier, who were maintaining order among the prisoners of war near the dining room.302

Kuzovkov’s account and Likhtenshtein’s statements clearly differ about the source of the lice; an explanation of this discrepancy is given later in the chapter. Meanwhile, where the overall activities targeting the camp guard are concerned, Likhtenshtein’s autobiography roughly corresponds to the facts presented by Kuzovkov: “Out of 51 guards, 28 came down with spotted typhus; 8 of them died, 2 of them were non-commissioned officers.”303 Odukha, however, states that “the Slavuta group poisoned several traitors of the Motherland, German lackeys. Sixteen German pilots were infected with typhus.”304 The precedent for using spotted typhus against the German occupiers was confirmed in a telephone interview with the urologist, Dr Halyna Voitseshuk, a former member of the Soviet secret network under Fedor Mikhailov who had known him since before the war.305 A CC CP(B)U report on the leader of the Slavuta inter-raion underground committee cites the result of his “special operations”: “He organized the physical extermination of Germans and traitors of the Motherland by the use of ‘spotted typhus and special treatment methods.’ Consequently, more than a hundred enemies were destroyed.”306 There are also indirect indications that Mikhailov’s group carried out operations to infect Soviet prisoners of war held in the Slavuta camp in

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144  •  Stalin’s Commandos order to cause an epidemic. The administrators of the German camp increasingly viewed Mikhailov’s doctors as playing an important role in combating the epidemic, which threatened both the Germans and the surrounding population. The network members also gained an opportunity to discover individuals among their patients who could be “useful” and loyal to them, above all attending doctors, and either then have their status raised to that of prisoners with passes or bring them out to the forest in the guise of “corpses.” In Mikhail Kuzmin’s book Doctors: Heroes of the Soviet Union, published in Moscow in 1969, this theory is corroborated by the following unambiguous phrase: “Mikhailov maintained links with the ‘Gross Lazaret’ [the Slavuta camp—A.G.], as a result of which infectious diseases began to appear frequently among the prisoners of war. Infectious sick people from the camp were sent to F. M. Mikhailov, to the hospital, where the majority of them ‘died,’ that is, they left for a partisan detachment.”307 For obvious reasons, former agents did not boast of such “devilry” after the war ended. However, their statements confirm those made by Kuzmin. All the above-listed statements indicate that lice were delivered from Slavuta to the Slavuta POW camp, where they were used for infecting the guards. That is, there was initially no spotted typhus in the camp. Likhtenshtein, among others, later collected lice from the sick and continued infecting other people. One of the men who was brought to the forest from the camp under the guise of a corpse was the military physician Ibragim Druian, who wrote a book of memoirs entitled We Kept the Oath, the word “oath” referring to the Hippocratic Oath. According to Druian, the epidemic of spotted typhus began no earlier than mid-February 1942. This coincides with the period of the second meeting attended by Mikhailov’s agents,308 referred to earlier as the “conference of doctors.” It was at this meeting that Odukha first learned about the launch of a “bacteriological war” and where he was assigned his first “medical” mission, described above. After the wave of typhus that struck the Slavuta camp—an ordinary POW camp (no. 357) during the first six months of its existence—the Germans turned it into “Gross Lazaret 301,” where sick prisoners were carted off to die. The secret-agent network, secretly distributing medication “among our people,” operated in camp until the end of the occupation. According to the data collected by the Extraordinary State Commission, approximately 150,000 people died during epidemics and starved to death in Gross Lazaret. If the hypothesis that Soviet secret agents infected prisoners of war holds true, then Mikhailov’s men are as responsible for their deaths as the Germans.

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The Main Directions of Red Partisan Activities  •  145 In 1965 Mikhailov was posthumously awarded the title of Hero of the Soviet Union. It is highly probably that Mikhailov was an operative of the Intelligence Directorate of the South-eastern Front Staff, and that he had been recruited for the military intelligence as early as the Civil War period. Between the fall of 1918 and early 1919 Mikhailov was trained for the command personnel of the Soviet fleet in Petrograd and, after completing his training, in April– May 1919 “he took part in the battles against Yudenich as a member of an independent marine corps, serving in the capacity of intelligence agent.” In 1920, despite having been expelled from the Communist Party, this former Red Navy man completed his studies at a medical institute and forged a successful career for himself. Over a period of 14 years he changed jobs seven times, moving from region to region, but he always held important positions, such as chief doctor—in other words, he headed up entire hospitals. During this time he was also sent for periodic military training seven times, each session lasting between 20 and 90 days.309 It is likely that Mikhailov was retained as a penetration agent of the army services, which does not exclude the possibility that he was left in place when the Red Army retreated. In his report about Mikhailov’s exploits, the director of the Khmelnytsky party archive indicated the ways in which the doctor’s group acquired agitation materials: “A large network of underground agents was created, which reached all the way to the front line, from where the committee received literature: fresh newspapers and leaflets.”310 Odukha’s reminiscences about Mikhailov also indicate that the doctor did not operate on his own initiative: “He introduced himself to me as a representative of the Revolutionary Military Council.”311 Odukha probably made an error—using the name of the Revolutionary Military Council, which did not exist in 1941, for the Military Council of the South-western Front. Whereas it is still merely hypothesis that Mikhailov’s people deliberately spread spotted typhus among Soviet prisoners of war, their work of infecting the Germans is a fact. This is the only known case of the operational use of a weapon of mass destruction (WMD) in World War II in the European theater of war. Its modest scale should not be underestimated, for typhus is a bacteriological weapon and therefore an example of a WMD, especially if one considers its capacity and even tendency toward self-propagation. Furthermore, this is one of very few documented cases of the operational use of bacteriological warfare in history. It is no accident that even during the most savage conflicts, combatants rarely fought against any enemy in this manner, for the simple reason that they were fearful of using such a

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146  •  Stalin’s Commandos “double-edged sword.” But Dr Fedor Mikhailov, a Soviet physician who had been trained by professionals, used it without compunction during a total war of extermination.

Propaganda Initially, the Nazi regime paid considerable attention to “enlightening” their subjects. It is no accident that the American historian Robert Herzstein called the fight on the German propaganda battlefield “the war that Hitler won.” In 1941 the huge agitational apparatus, in which the emotional upsurge of the young extremist party combined with the German tradition of diligence and effectiveness, was transferred to the ter­ ritory of Eastern Europe. As recognized in an analytical note drafted by the TsShPD, the partisans confronted a veritable army of professionals, who discovered countless helpers among Soviet citizens. Therefore, “the entire system of deceitful fascist propaganda, with sufficient means and cadres at its disposal, produced results in individual cases.”312 Most frequently such “individual cases” were observed during the first year of the war, as no leadership of partisan propaganda then existed. The forest soldiers were initially preoccupied with their survival. Later, when the first military operations were launched, they limited themselves to conducting oral propaganda and had no method to counter agitators with swastikas who called the denizens of the forests “two-legged Stalin’s jackals.” The main bulk of propaganda materials was dispatched to the German rear on board Red Army planes.313 However, as the female partisan propa­ gandist Kukharenko wrote in mid-1943, in the area bordered by Ukraine, Belarus, and Russia, “practically from the beginning of the war the population of villages through which we drove (the unit passed through five oblasts by May) had not seen a Soviet newspaper and did not know the truth about Soviet life and events on the fronts. They come across leaflets [dropped] from a plane only occasionally; sometimes local partisans bring in leaflets.”314 Many leaflets that were written by hand in 1941–42, which were riddled with grammatical errors, to boot, demonstrated the weakness of the partisans in this area, especially compared with what the Germans produced: “The Hitlerites, especially in 1942, inundated even remote villages with colorful journals and posters.”315 Moreover, the content of a number of partisan leaflets makes one question the judgment of their authors. Clearly, the appeal that was issued to members of collective farms, both men and women, at the beginning of 1942 by one of the underground oblast committees of the Communist

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The Main Directions of Red Partisan Activities  •  147 Party, in connection with the German land reform that had led to a palpable increase in private plots, had the opposite to intended effect. This agitational opus lauded the communist economy: If the landowner-kulak system that exists in Germany is so wonderful and the collective farm system in the USSR is so bad, then why are people starving to death in Germany, but the collective farm peasants and the entire Soviet people have an abundance of all foodstuffs? … Under the leadership … of the great Stalin … as a result of total collectivization, the kulaks as an exploiting class have been liquidated, and the poormiddle peasantry has left behind hardship and devastation; it is ensured an abundance of foodstuffs and a prosperous life on the collective farm.316

A meager quantity of leaflets dating to the first year of the war was stored in archives because most detachments were not set up to issue them. For example, in Saburov’s unit the first leaflet was printed on 2 July 1942.317 Oleksii Fedorov supposed that the result of oral propaganda was sometimes the opposite of the desired one: “For example, today we had a meeting, and the next day the Germans arrive and start bullying the population, beating people, etc. Conversations with a small number of people, especially in the fields, this is not a bad form of conducting political-educational work. Still, the main thing is the distribution of our Soviet literature, leaflets.”318 During a meeting attended by partisan commanders and Ponomarenko in August 1942, Saburov complained that the lack of paper was hindering the psychological impact on collaborationist formations: “But it is neces­ sary to write. In addition, they are inventing a lot: one detachment writes one thing, another writes something different. This is where lack of coordination crops up.”319 After receiving various reports about the shortcomings of partisan propaganda,320 in the fall of 1942 the TsSHPD and the UShPD turned their attention to waging not only a war of sabotage but also a psychological war. On 19 October 1942 Sivkov, head of the 1st Department of the TsShPD, sent Ponomarenko a note informing him that the Central Committee of the Komsomol was sending cadres to the German rear for the purpose of improving partisan propaganda. Seventy people were to be sent to Russia and Karelia, ten to Belarus, and 15 to Ukraine. During the last three months of 1942 alone, 300 Komsomol activists were trained to conduct political work in the entire occupied territory of the USSR.321 One of their tasks was to expand the Komsomol stratum in detachments and among the local population. All the proposals were accepted by Ponomarenko.

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148  •  Stalin’s Commandos Gradually, local partisans also began to devote attention to agitation, and they either acquired trophy printing presses or obtained them from behind the front line. The regular issuance of print publications was organized. According to TsShPD data, by the end of 1942 14 newspapers were being published by partisan detachments and groups on Soviet-occupied territory.322 By early 1943 the Ukrainian partisans alone were publishing nine newspapers,323 followed by magazines. The TsShPD had a propaganda department that was officially called a ‘political department’; however, the UShPD, which was not headed by a party apparatchik but a Chekist from the Border Troops, did not have its own propaganda department. From behind the front line, partisan propaganda was periodically managed, in the form of individual directives, by various detachments of the UShPD or Strokach himself, while cadres of propagandists, journalists, writers, and printed materials were sent by communist and Komsomol organizations of the Ukrainian SSR with the advice and consent of the Ukrainian Staff. In order to coordinate the psychological war effort, a working group within the Department of Propaganda and Agitation of the CC CP(B)U was formed to oversee work among the inhabitants of Ukraine’s occupied regions; the group was headed by L. Palamarchuk. From early 1943 onwards, cinema units began arriving in large Ukrainian detachments. That year 70 screenings of films, including Razgrom nemtsev pod Moskvoi (The Germans’ Rout at Moscow), Suvorov, and Salavat Yulaev, took place in the Chernihiv-Volyn unit, which were attended by partisans and members of the local population.324 In addition, the greater availability of radio communications allowed the partisans to receive broadcasts from the “Soviet mainland” with growing frequency. “Broadcasting by two radio stations, ‘T. H. Shevchenko’ in Saratov and ‘Soviet Ukraine’ in Moscow, was organized for the laboring masses in the occupied districts and evacuated population [of Ukraine].”325 However, even by the end of the second year of the war there were still many shortcomings with regard to “educational measures” in the three “exemplary” units based in Ukraine. According to Captain of State Security Yakov Korotkov, in the spring of 1943 the “lack of political work” was observed among Kovpak and his men: “As commissar, Rudnev deals with operations, and in fact he is performing the role of unit commander; he is occupied with political work up to a point.”326 Kukharenko, a lecturer from the CC CP(B)U, described the situation in Fedorov’s large unit in the same vein:

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The Main Directions of Red Partisan Activities  •  149 There is absolutely no direction of political-mass work on the part of C[omrade] Druzhinin, the commissar of the large unit, and C[omrade] Herasymenko, the propaganda chief. No work is being done with political commissars and commissars to raise their qualifications. The entire work of political commissars is limited to reading the reports of the Information Bureau. During the 4.5 months of my stay in the large unit there was only one meeting about propaganda. No one is working with the most active members and guiding their political growth […] Neither the commissar nor the secretary of the party committee or the propaganda head delivered a single speech … There was only one party meeting … The work of the Komsomol is also poorly set up.327

The same situation existed in the Saburov unit.328 Here there was also a lack of comprehensive propaganda aimed at the population, collaborators, units of Germany’s satellites, and the Ukrainian nationalists. Partisans’ reports are packed with information about the distribution of hundreds of thousands of agitational materials, but the actual volume of print production was modest. According to Kuzma Dubyna, a CC CP(B)U lecturer, “information hunger” was felt in the summer of 1943 even in the “partisan land” located on the border between the Belarusian SSR and the Ukrainian SSR: “Very often ‘foot messengers’ arrive from villages 8–10 kilometers away with a request to obtain a newspaper, a leaflet. Newspapers and leaflets are read until they are worn through.”329 One of the systematic shortcomings of the agitation conducted by the Soviet Ukrainian partisans was the fact that most of the printed materials were issued in the Russian language. Above all, this problem was connected to the lack of proper typefaces. The situation reached such a point that appeals directed at the Ukrainian nationalists were frequently composed in Russian. This shortcoming is thrown into even greater relief when one considers the fact that more than 90 per cent of all newspapers issued in Nazi-occupied Ukraine were published in the Ukrainian language. The partisans’ appeals to the Czechs, Slovaks, and Poles, and even to the Hungarians, were also composed mostly in Russian. The sole leaflet aimed at the non-Ukrainian formations of the UPA (the Uzbeks, Azerbaijanis, etc.), which was discovered during the course of a search of the archives for this book, was published in Ukrainian,330 a language that was not very well understood by the non-Slavic readers. From time to time nationality issues cropped up, a potent feature of the Soviet system. In 1942 a Russian-language leaflet entitled “About the Glory of Russian Weapons,” which was aimed at the population of Ukraine,

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150  •  Stalin’s Commandos lauded the 26th anniversary of the Brusilov Offensive and in a eulogistic tone glorified the victories of the Russian imperial armies.331 In the Shevchenko Detachment of Behma’s unit, the CC CP(B)U lecturer Kuzma Dubyna discovered a “politically harmful” Russian-language leaflet, dated July 1943, entitled “Appeal to the Don Cossacks.” Dubyna wrote: One speaks about the “Russian state,” about the struggle of the “Russian people,” but no one speaks a single word about the struggle of the Soviet people (Russians, Ukrainians, Belarusians, etc.) […] People have not considered that they are working in districts where Bulba’s people are operating (Rivne oblast), pouring rivers of lies about “Muscovite agents” and the like. And there is no doubt that in the present situation this tone of the leaflet does not produce anything but harm.332

Not infrequently, partisans engaged in blatant lies or distortions of reality in order to exaggerate the effectiveness of Soviet propaganda, which was expedient only in a number of cases. First of all, the anti-Slavic racism of the national socialists was exaggerated in order to convince the civilian population that everyone without exception would be destroyed by the German invaders. Soviet agitators constantly attributed incendiary words to the leader of the Third Reich. A brief fragment from a leaflet produced by Oleksii Fedorov’s unit states: “That blood-sucker, Hitler the cannibal, wrote in his insane program: ‘In order to conquer the entire world, the most important thing is to expel and destroy the Slavic peoples—the Russians, Poles, Czechs, Slovaks, Bulgarians, Ukrainians, Belarusians … In order to achieve this goal it is crucial to lie, betray, kill.’”333 Second, with the rarest334 exceptions, partisan propaganda ignored the Holocaust. It is possible that the forest soldiers took the anti-Semitic moods in Eastern Europe into account and believed that a focus on the Nazis’ Judaeophobia might cast the partisans in the role of “defenders of the Jews.” Third, the scale and savagery of the Third Reich’s colonizing plans were somewhat inflated. In one appeal dated 1942 the red agitators went so far as to claim that Hitler had resolved to send 25 million colonists to Ukraine335—that is, one-third of the German population. A leaflet produced by the Saburov unit in mid-1942 contained the following fabricated quotations: Darré, a minister of fascist Germany, declared: “It is necessary for cultivated lands to be transferred into the hands of the class of German

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The Main Directions of Red Partisan Activities  •  151 masters […] The country, populated by a foreign race, must be a country of slaves.” … The following letter was found on the body of a dead German officer: “Dear Fritz! The son of Mr. Reschmer has already secured an estate—one and a half thousand ha […] I am attracted to Podillia … I hope that our future estate will be no smaller […] Your Elsa.”336

The fourth direction of the partisans’ “slander against the Germanfascist system” was the incredible inflation of the Wehrmacht’s losses.337 In 1942 the following “statistics” were found in the agitational materials produced by the forests soldiers: “After 16 months of war the Germans have lost more than 12 million soldiers and officers.”338 This crudely constructed lie also appeared in appeals aimed at Hungarian and Slovak guard units.339 In contrast, German propagandists generally disseminated correct data about the losses suffered by the Wehrmacht and the Red Army, at least until late 1942. To be sure, crimes committed by the Soviets were attributed to the Germans. A textbook example is the Katyn massacre. Another similar case is the assertion of partisan propagandists that the Germans were responsible for the mass shootings in the Ukrainian city of Vinnytsia, numerous reports of which had appeared in the German occupation press.340 For the most part, the partisans tried to initiate a dialog with civilians, but a tactic of blatant intimidation of the population was also applied. One example of this is the order that was issued by the Chernihiv-based “General Orlenko” (Oleksii Fedorov) in November 1941 concerning the ban on supplying food to the Germans and the threat that any peasants who disobeyed the partisans would be shot. On 29 July 1942, after issuing another appeal to the inhabitants of the Chernihiv region, Fedorov toned down the harshness of the obove-mentioned directive: “Individuals who violate this order by bringing grain, cattle, and other foodstuffs to the German occupiers will be punished by the harsh revolutionary hand: all their property will be confiscated.”341 The partisans were clearly in no position to ensure that these promises would be kept, and empty threats usually do nothing to instill respect for their issuers. Red partisan agitation was the propaganda of hatred, and it was distinguished by its expressiveness. Hardly any leaflets targeting Wehrmacht troops were issued, but civilians were treated to a considerable number of “forceful” words about the Germans. For example, Hitler was described as “possessed,” “a bloodthirsty reptile,” “a foul cannibal with Prussian stupidity,” and “a raging serpent.” The leaders of the Third Reich were called “fascist ringleaders and junior ringleaders,” Alfred Rosenberg, Minister for the Occupied Eastern Territories, was crowned with the epithet

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152  •  Stalin’s Commandos “fascist junior scum,” and Wehrmacht officers were denigrated as “German achfficers [scornful version of “officers”].” A whole slew of descriptive words were applied to the Germans: “German scum,” “villains,” and “Hitlerite degenerates” with innate “sadistic German exactness.” Germans were even likened to animals: they were called “pagans,” for whom a “dog’s grave was prepared,” “a gang,” and “locusts.” In one case, the widow of an officer who was killed by the partisans was called a “gluttonous fascist bitch.” The apogee of the communist propagandists’ perfunctory rage was the demonization of the enemy: the collective German was defined as a “vampire,” a “ghoul,” and, finally, “Satan.” The aggressiveness of Soviet agitators was expressed in absurd and heartrending appeals to armed, unorganized, individual resistance: The German beast must be killed. Kill him in the house, kill him on the streets of your village, blow him up with grenades, run him through with bayonets, pitchforks, hack him with an ax, kill him with a wheel— kill with whatever you can BUT KILL HIM! Kill the German brigand everywhere. When he stops for the night, knife him while he sleeps … Strangle, cut him down, run him through in the forest, in the field, on roads, destroy him everywhere—on land and on water.342

Focused on the propagandizing horrors, literally savoring the barbarity of the German occupiers, Soviet partisan agitation was utterly bereft of humanity. It is rare to encounter verses of a calm, patriotic content, literary sketches, or the lovingly described “peaceful labor of Soviet people” and aesthetics of everydayness, which was noted by Kukharenko, the female lecturer of the CC CP(B)U: Humor and satire, as well as color posters that are utterly lacking in our print propaganda, enjoyed great popularity among the population and the partisans […] In addition, the partisans have a great desire to see comedies and scenes from ordinary life. We often received requests to “send us something cheerful” (for the purpose of distracting themselves from the tense situation in the rear).343

It is impossible to concur fully with the claim advanced by several historians, who write that “the Soviet approach to the problem of military collaborators with the Germans, as revealed through the partisan ‘middlemen,’ revealed a striking measure of tactical flexibility.”344 The most well-known Soviet leaflet, entitled “Tell Me, Scum, How Much Were You Given?”, which depicts a policeman licking the rear end

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The Main Directions of Red Partisan Activities  •  153 of a German, can hardly be called a masterpiece. Fighters and officers of guard formations were no doubt offended by this caricature. During the first two years of the war the partisans threatened to unleash reprisals against the families of individuals who were working for the Germans. For example, in January 1943 the propagandists of one detachment urged policemen to come over to their side: “Look, you will not be needed by today’s masters. They will drop you. Have you not thought that it will be too late then to repent? The people will not forgive you your treachery; will not forgive your families, your children.”345 Next to these words on the leaflet is a note that may have been written by a staff member of the UShPD or the CC CP(B)U: “This is wrong.” However, the direct threat to families was reiterated by Saburov’s men in similar materials that were issued on 25 February and 13 April 1943.346 On the other hand, collaborators were constantly promised a pardon if they left the Germans’ service, especially from late 1942 onwards: “The red partisans, the Red Army command, the Soviet government … are offering full amnesty—they are pardoning everything.”347 However, partisan counterintelligence officers continued to “cleanse” guard units that had gone over to the side of the forest soldiers, and after the war all former collaborators were arrested and either imprisoned or executed. Quite often, partisan specialists of psychological warfare wrote blatant nonsense in their appeals to the German satellite countries. In particular, Saburov’s men produced leaflets aimed at the Hungarians, which include the following passages: “There, in your motherland, the German executioners are robbing your families, confiscating grain, cattle, raping your wives, sisters, and mothers.”348 “The Hitlerite executioners have conquered your country … The German executioners have condemned [the members of your families—A.G.] to a hungry and agonizing death.”349 All this was pure fantasy, which did nothing but elicit bewilderment in the Hungarian soldiers. To make matters worse, appeals targeting the Hungarians were often duplicated in appeals addressed to the fighters in Slovak units350 and to Czechs serving in the Wehrmacht. Despite the fact that in combatting the Ukrainian Insurgent Army the Soviet partisans clearly represented the strong side, they did not achieve any special successes in their propaganda against the OUN. In an appeal to the population of Volyn the agitators of the Rivne oblast committee of the CP(B)U—that is, Behma’s unit—presented Stepan Bandera as a “true lackey of the German fascists.” The fanatical cruelty of the “masters” of the leader of the OUN(B), the Banderite faction of the OUN, who at this time was imprisoned in the Sachsenhausen concentration camp, was underscored: “There is no limit to the cruelty of the two-legged Hitlerite cattle.”351

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154  •  Stalin’s Commandos Regardless of the shortcomings that affected the propaganda output of the red partisans—its hackneyed nature and its clumsiness—it nevertheless managed to inflict some harm on the German side. In fact, agitation led to the growth of a so-called strike wave (volynka). As early as 28 October 1941 Theodor Oberländer, the head of the Wehrmacht’s sabotage service in the southern sector of the Soviet–German front, noted the danger emanating from this “silent enemy”: “One threat that is even greater than the partisans’ active resistance is labor sabotage, for the crushing of which we have even fewer chances of success.”352 Armed saboteurs operating in the rear area can be neutralized with military force. If workers pretend that they do not understand authority’s instructions and orders, if they work slowly, organize “accidents,” and make off with factory property, then even the most sophisticated corporate management is of no use. When peasants damage fields, cattle, and agricultural machinery, conceal the harvest, and village elders endlessly complain about the cold weather, rain, drought, heat, poor harvest, and the devastation wrought by the war, it is hardly possible to control such a situation even with the aid of public hangings. On the other hand, red partisan propaganda, which had much greater technical resources at its disposal than the Banderites, was appreciably inferior to that of the nationalists in terms of intensity, quality, engaging features, coverage of the population, brilliance of style, scathing irony, and vividness of narrative. These differences are even more striking if one considers that the educational level of the Soviet forest soldiers was much higher than that of the UPA fighters. In Western Ukraine, where the majority of the nationalists were born, the level of illiteracy was significant. The Soviet partisans were products of the Stalinist system, which by 1941 had become ossified and had lost its impulse as an extremist movement. The Ukrainian nationalists frequently noted their enemies’ lack of ideological commitment.353 However, loyalty to a superpower and belief in its victory nevertheless helped partisan agitators exert a definite influence on the consciousness of the population living in the occupied territories.

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4 The Personnel of Partisan Formations The Social Structure of Detachments, Principles of Recruitment, and a Socio-Psychological Portrait of the Partisans Command and compulsion were definitive in the creation of units and drafting of personnel for Soviet formations. The units were created by the NKVD, oblast committees, and army structures in keeping with Stalin’s directive. Detachments comprised members serving in internal affairs, including prison guards,1 state security agencies, Soviet party functionaries and servicemen—members of the Komsomol and communists were recruited according to these categories—as well as non-party workers, peasants, white-collar workers and intellectuals. Refusal to serve in the ranks of the partisans or the Red Army was equated with evasion of military service, which led to grave repercussions. Repression also awaited the relatives of such “unstable elements.” For example, on 9 July 1941 the NKGB obtained the following typical pledge from Kupriian Holovaty, a resident of the village of Nyzhnii Karahach in Ukraine’s Izmail oblast: “I undertake to keep everything that will take place in my house, everyone who comes, in strict secrecy … For violating the present signed statement I have been warned that I will be shot together with my family. Concerning which I am signing my name.”2 Various incentives such as wages,3 which were issued to the partisans throughout the entire war, played a secondary role. But even the threat of being shot failed to convince all Soviet citizens to struggle for Stalinism in the Germans’ and Romanians’ rear-line areas. In late September 1941 Regimental Commissar Ilinsky, the head of the 8th Department of the Southern Front’s Political Directorate, noted the rising number of refusals from potential recruits or those individuals who had already been assigned to partisan detachments: One of the main reasons … is the protracted runaround from the moment of recruitment to the moment a recruited individual is dispatched to his place of work. During this period of time these people, who are left to

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156  •  Stalin’s Commandos their own devices, weaken morally. On this basis, one individual who was recruited in the Moldavian SSR, as a result of his refusal, was offered the choice either to leave for his designated place or appeal to the tribunal; he (Shcherbakov) decided to opt for the latter.4

The majority of detachments created in this fashion in 1941–42 disbanded or were destroyed. By dint of a peculiar kind of natural selection, the majority of individuals who remained in an area suited to partisan warfare were those who saw themselves engaged in a remarkable struggle in the Germans’ rear and were capable of carrying out activities in forests. Mykola Sheremet wrote that: “The main nucleus … comprises communists and Soviet raion workers left behind in the rear at the party’s decision. This is the cement, so to speak. The command and political composition of partisan detachments is composed of them.”5 To this ‘cement’ was added the mass of ‘bricks’, with the aid of soldiers who had escaped encirclement (okruzhentsy), and escaped prisoners of war; peasants and other representatives from the local population who had been mobilized by the partisans or went to them voluntarily; turncoats—former members of auxiliary formations; and cadres dispatched from behind the front line (radio operators, Red Army and NKVD officers, saboteurs, medical personnel, party functionaries, party workers, etc.). Units did not only form just before and during the retreat of the Red Army. In a number of cases, entire detachments, numbering dozens of men, were sent via a different route from the Soviet side behind the front. It is worthwhile devoting some attention to the reasons why volunteers from the civilian population joined partisan detachments. Some did this purely out of a desire to fight the Nazi invaders. However, by virtue of their policies, the German occupiers also created a kind of cadre reserve for the Soviet partisans. Many peasants had fled to the forests in an attempt to avoid being deported to Germany as slave labor. In addition, during the course of “anti-partisan” punitive operations the Nazis burned down entire villages, and some peasants managed to hide. Also, the Nazis were initially mistrustful of Soviet apparatchiks, and many former government representatives preferred to remain at some distance from the new authorities. When some partisans came to the home of a young peasant named Vasyl Yermolenko, inviting him to join their detachment, he took them up on their suggestion. According to Yermolenko, who had been a member of the Komsomol before the war, after the visit from the partisans the police automatically considered him a “gang accomplice.” Thus, for this 17-yearold boy the alternative to joining a Soviet partisan detachment was either

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The Personnel of Partisan Formations  •  157 prison or deportation.6 In other words, the voluntary recruitment of Soviet citizens into the partisans’ ranks was usually due to the direct pressure of the situation upon potential recruits: a direct or indirect threat to their lives. However, it appears that most partisans were peasants who had been mobilized directly by the partisans under pain of death. A number of documents attest to this.7 The materials produced by German rear-line agencies occasionally describe an additional measure of persuasion— property—which was used for recruiting partisans in the Sumy region in the summer of 1942: “A summons addressed to 10 residents was found on a telegraph pole in the village of Diakivka, south of Buryn […] The indicated residents are to come to the partisans; in the event of non-compliance, they will be shot and their homes will be burned.”8 According to Aleksandr Saburov, during a meeting in early September 1942 attended by members of the partisan staff headquarters and commanders of detachments, Stalin approved a suggestion to recruit individuals of call-up age in the anti-Nazi struggle, declaring: “It is necessary to levy all persons subject to the draft who remain in villages, whether they want to fight or not. In extreme cases, consider those who do not want to fight [objectors—A. G.] as deserters.”9 As Saburov noted, the same idea was reiterated by Ponomarenko. Even in the spring of 1943 the writer Mykola Sheremet maintained that without forced recruitment the reds were not able to resolve the “cadre question”; furthermore, he suggested in his report to Khrushchev that the practice be augmented thus: “With this we are saving our youth from the bloody talons of Hitler, who is conducting this kind of mobilization under the mark of ‘voluntariness’ into the so-called ROA [Russian Liberation Army].”10 The first secretary of the CC of the CP(B)U was informed about Sheremet’s note, which was also circulated straightaway among the staff of the UShPD. The largest increase in Ukrainian partisan detachments was noted in 1943, and the Germans as well as the AK and the UPA recorded most often mass conscription into the ranks of the Soviet commandos.11 By inflating the number of their fighting personnel, some partisan commanders sought to obtain from the UShPD a corresponding increase in the volume of materiel and technical deliveries to their detachments. This explains why unarmed men frequently made up over 30 per cent of the personnel of such formations.12 Even though the effectiveness of forcible recruitment to partisan formations led to a decrease in motivation, it was nevertheless justified from a military standpoint. Between the fall of 1942 and the end of the war there was no significant diminishment in the partisans’ ranks. The Red Army’s victory was in the offing, and the Germans and Hungarians, and later even

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158  •  Stalin’s Commandos the Banderites, usually viewed turncoats as spies and would kill them, which discouraged partisans from defecting over to the enemy side. At the same time, the lack of screening during recruitment to partisan formations went against common sense. For example, in various areas of the Soviet rear future partisans were selected from camps and criminal circles (robbers, murderers, sellers of stolen goods, et al.), and even they were not always queried about their desire to fight.13 One anecdotal example of the use of “socially close elements” (felons) in Ukraine comes from F. Valiev’s intelligence group, whose deputy commander was a native of Dnipropetrovsk oblast, Oleh Serbyn (b. 1906). Before the war Serbyn had 22 convictions and he had escaped from prison 16 times; his cumulative sentencing record was 168 years and 8 months. In the application that he filled out in the Soviet rear area when he was joining the partisans Serbyn provided a pithy description of his professional activities between 1924 and 1939: “recidivist thief.” During his stint in the camps before the war he had distinguished himself on the labor front and for that reason was given early release and accepted into the AUCP(B) in 1940. Together with other members of his partisan group, on 15 April 1943 Serbyn was dropped into the territory of Kirovohrad oblast and instantly deserted to the Germans, an action that resulted in the capture of the rest of the group.14 In one report future Hero of the Soviet Union Andrii Hrabchak, commander of the Beria unit, frankly described the principle according to which his subordinates were recruited: Before flying out to the enemy’s rear … I told Com[rade] Strokach that I am organizing the detachment this way: for the skeleton I will recruit excellent, devoted comrades and then I will accept everyone: honest and dishonest people, even villains. That is what we did: we accepted everyone, taking an interest above all in whether he is physically healthy and not a brutal coward (see the instruction), but where he was born, had he served in the police or the gendarmerie, was a secondary, “fleeting” question.15

Former partisan Vasyl Yermolenko testified that during the call-up to the Vinnytsia unit there was no selection whatsoever. According to his statements, in the Polissia region in the spring of 1943 the partisans of that unit carried out a frightful mobilization … [They took] 70 men, probably … They were taken unreservedly: suitable, not suitable. They even took an epileptic. What stupidity that was! Some of the population fled mobilization, they hid. Belarusians hid in general … We arrived

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The Personnel of Partisan Formations  •  159 in Belarus, [and] there was a multitude of local detachments there. And when we wanted to group them together—poof, they were gone! Everyone scattered wherever they could … “Go away,” they say, “we have enough to do here.” And how will you mobilize him? You mobilize, you step away 3 meters, and you can’t see him.16

The personnel of the 11 largest units of the UShPD will be described next. The summary table below (Table 2) was compiled in keeping with the following rule: when data pertaining to a certain point was missing for any large unit, the calculation of the percentage of the total number was given only if there were data available on those large units. 1. The unit of Ukrainian cavalry detachments led by M. Naumov.17 In 1941 the detachment had 20 men; in 1942—325; in 1943—2,792; and in 1944—166. 2. The Zhytomyr unit commanded by A. Saburov:18 1941—56 men; 1942—948; 1943—1,786; 1944—409. 3. The Chernihiv-Volyn unit led by O. Fedorov (including the Wanda Wasilewska Brigade):19 1941—411 men; 1942—1,006; 1943— 3,271; 1944—569. 4. The First Kovpak Ukrainian Partisan Division (commanders S. Kovpak, P. Vershyhora):20 1941—248 men; 1942—2,497; 1943—1,496; 1944—1,335. 5. The Popudrenko Chernihiv unit (commanders M. Popudrenko, F. Korotkov):21 1941—198 men; 1942—231; 1943—3,024. 6. The Stalin unit (Commander M. Shukaev).22 7. The Mikhailov large Kamianets-Podilsky partisan unit (Commander A. Odukha):23 1941—53; 1942—139; 1943—1,785; 1944—2,942. 8. The Za Rodinu Chernihiv unit (Commander I. Bovkun):24 1941—47; 1942—90; 1943—2,928. 9. The Khrushchev Ternopil unit (Commander I. Shitov) (including the large unit commanded by D. Nykolaichyk and B. Shangin):25 1941— 31; 1942—369; 1943—2,980; 1944—520. 10. The Shchors unit based in Zhytomyr oblast (Commander S. Malikov):26 1942—371, 1943—5589. 11. The Khrushchev Kyiv partisan unit (Commander I. Khytrychenko):27 1941—8 men; 1942—82; 1943—3,425.

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Komsomol members

Communists

Jews

Poles

Belarusians

Russians

Deserters from collaborationist formations Ukrainians

Women

Executed

Strength according to personnel lists for 1941–44 Losses: Killed and disappeared without a trace Deserted

659

393

42

55

186

438

390

54

46

772

394

1,807

2,023

635

125

226

546

222

36

72

441

510

No data No data

3,199

2.

3,303

1.

856

818

247

258

974

1,655

1,976

197

433

10

55

495

5,257

3.

1240

880

209

72

878

2,120

1,875

339

463

No data

30

1527

5,549

4.

849

449

No data

1

65

1,257

2,003

No data

259

No data No data

153

3,452

5.

538

277

27

No data

263

452

1,536

No data

95

No data No data No data

3,359

6.

1,067

557

57

205

47

1,178

3,087

238

199

57

60

568

4,919

7.

795

403

No data No data

21

381

2,585

45

473

No data No data

122

3,065

8.

Table 2. Personnel of the Eleven Largest Units of the UShPD

375

195

83

377

190

891

2,165

172

157

24

40

311

3,900

9.

1,610

857

62

337

85

1,105

4,696

624

303

75

65

312

5,960

10.

968

621

44

78

32

974

2,272

No data

341

8

21

287

3,515

11. (4,726) 11.25 % (343) 1,06% (210) 0.78 % 3,171 6.97 % (2,286) 6.51 % 26,035 57.23 % 11,312 24.87 % 3513 7,72 % (1429) 3,66 % (825) 2.11 % 5,840 12.84 % 9,395 20.65 %

45,478

Total

The Personnel of Partisan Formations  •  161 In the above-mentioned units, communists and Komsomol members comprised one-third of the personnel, but party-political work in partisan formations was a formality and, after receiving directives from the CC CP(B)U to strengthen party cells, commanders and political instructors sought to obtain an automatic increase in the numbers of communist members, without devoting much attention to their “training.” A partisan detachment was more reliant on its commander, much more so than a front-line unit, and the operational unit’s very existence depended on his personal qualities. Out of the 48 partisan commanders, commissars, and chiefs of staff of large units, brigades, and detachments who were awarded the title of Hero of the Soviet Union for their participation in the partisan struggle in Soviet Ukraine,28 six (12.5 per cent) were elite party and state employees before the war (if one excludes the heads of the non-nomenklatural level); ten (21 per cent) worked in the NKVD, including the Border Troops, and 14 (25 per cent) held command positions in the Red Army. The remaining commanders came from other social strata. To illustrate this, descriptions of the commanders of three large Ukrainian units will be given. Sydir Kovpak (b. 1887) fought in World War I as a St George Cavalier. In 1918–20 he fought on the side of the reds and commanded a partisan detachment. Between the two world wars Kovpak was a state official. A Banderite intelligence report describes him as a man of medium height with a black beard: “He does not wear a hat, he dresses in civilian clothing, there are 4 or 5 medals on his chest … He goes in the head of a gang. To Ukrainians he speaks in Ukrainian, to Muscovites—in Muscovite. On the whole, he creates the impression of being a highly cultured person. He ignores the Germans and their battles.”29 Hryhorii Balytsky was charmed by the former chairman of the Putyvl city soviet: “Kolpak has a gaptoothed mouth, he is crafty and a joker, he looks like a gypsy. Kolpak is a real hero, a people’s knight.”30 In his diary Commissar Rudnev, despite being embroiled in a quarrel with his commander, noted that Kovpak had the traits of a leader: “How he loves to repeat other people’s ideas, and how stupid and crafty he is, like a khokhol [derogatory term for a Ukrainian]; he knows that he has someone on whom he can rely.”31 The authors of a German intelligence report focused on Kovpak’s reputation: The partisans call him “Hubcap” [kolpak in Russian], “Grandpa,” “Father,” and oth[er] nicknames. Generally recognized among commanders and rank-and-file soldiers as a long-march specialist … His men are tough and tailor-made for marches … In Moscow he is regarded as the “father of the partisan movement in Ukraine.” Kovpak’s

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162  •  Stalin’s Commandos age is advanced, he is 60 years old. For this reason he does not value his life. He himself takes part in battles and engenders imitators among young people.32

In the partisan community, the communist bureaucrat Vasyl Behma (b. 1906) was the exact opposite of Kovpak. Scrutiny by the UShPD revealed his inability to command partisans: ‘In comparison with other large units, Comrade Behma’s large unit is the most equipped with weapons, ammunition, and explosive materials; however, in terms of combat activities it occupies one of the last places. There is weak discipline in the large unit, [weak] mass political work.’33 The deputy head of the UShPD, the saboteur Ilya Starinov, also wrote about the time he spent in the large Rivne unit: The partisans were having supper. Music resounded throughout the entire camp: an accordion here, a harmonica there. “This is not a large unit but a philharmonic!” Strokach joked. “You live merrily, Vasilii Andreevich!” “No complaints, no complaints,” replied Behma in the same tone. “People need to relax in a cultured way.”34

Possibly the quirkiest figure in the ranks of Soviet partisans was Aleksandr Saburov (b. 1908), who, prior to the German invasion, served in the Gulag NKVD. In all probability he was the director of political training courses for personnel.35 At the beginning of the war Saburov was appointed commissar of an extermination battalion. The history of his subsequent adventures was described briefly and truthfully by Strokach’s former aidede-camp Aleksandr Rusanov: His entire partisan career was built on deceiving people, on extraordinary mendacity. After becoming encircled in 1941, he and nine men hid in the Briansk forest. He had a two-way radio. Many other small groups were hiding in this same Briansk forest […] Saburov began showing up at these groups, pretending to be the deputy People’s Commissar of the NKVD of the Ukrainian SSR. Of course, in honor of this, sheep confiscated from peasants were slaughtered, moonshine was distilled, [and] drinking bouts were organized. Saburov suggested to the leaders of these small partisan detachments that they send him reports about their combat activities so that he could transmit these reports via his two-way radio to Moscow under the names of the commanders. The commanders submitted these reports, but Saburov radioed them to Moscow under

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The Personnel of Partisan Formations  •  163 his own name. In this way he took credit for other people’s actions, and he also lied in the process. In Moscow the impression was that he was someone who could work miracles. He was promoted to the rank of major-general and [awarded the title] of Hero of the Soviet Union. It was only later that everything came to light … But it was decided to keep silent about this.36

During the Stalin raid in late 1942, Saburov’s large unit consolidated its grip in the area of the Polissian swamps. Mikhail Naumov offered the following unflattering comment about his colleague: “General Saburov is sitting north of Ovruch, armed to the teeth … He is always supplied by Moscow right down to the highest quality of cigarettes. This ‘talented’ military commander who sits on his ass [polkosidets, instead of polkovodets— A.G.] … never lacks for anything, including medals.”37 Saburov, concentrating on carrying out sabotage on the railways, fought until 1944, and later continued his service in the NKVD, where he also engaged in the struggle against the UPA. This former partisan reached the peak of his professional career in 1954–57, when he was appointed to head one of the directorates of the Ministry of the Interior of the USSR. Where the psychological traits of the Soviet partisans are concerned, the historian Earl Zimke is probably right: “The average partisan [like any normal man—A.G.] does not engage in a single-minded pursuit of a heroic demise, but is rather more inclined toward preoccupation with his personal survival.”38 At the same time, in extreme situations every person chooses his own survival strategy and tactics for improving his situation, and this is what distinguishes one person from another. Whereas mobilized peasants composed the majority of detachment personnel, a minority that ended up in partisan formations by force of circumstance, or even on an absolutely voluntary basis, imparted a certain dynamic quality to UShPD formations. This distinguished them, on the one hand, from the civilian populations of the occupied territories and, on the other, from Red Army troops. For example, a Red Army soldier who was cut off from the Soviet lines could try to return to his unit, surrender (and possibly join the police afterwards), simply settle somewhere quietly as an adopted son or farmhand, or join the partisans. The latter route was obviously chosen, on the one hand, by people who wanted to take charge of their own destiny and, on the other, by those who remained loyal to the Soviet government. One should not be misled by the phrase “having given his agreement to work in the enemy’s rear,”39 which is encountered in documents produced

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164  •  Stalin’s Commandos by Soviet commando training centers located behind the front, particularly partisan schools. In the event that they declined to follow up on this suggestion, men of conscription age were drafted into the Red Army, in whose ranks the chances of being killed were higher than in the ranks of the partisans, at least in 1943–44. The man who chose the rear of the Wehrmacht rather than the front understood that in the forests, far from the leading centers, his life would depend mostly on himself, his resourcefulness, and keen wit, not on the strict and faceless army system of subjection and submission. A young peasant who saved himself from being deported as slave labor to Germany by joining a partisan detachment was a rebel to some degree. He willingly opted for danger and loss of life in a forest rather than a semi-starved and degrading but more or less guaranteed existence in Nazi servitude. If, after careful consideration and without the pressure of circumstances, a future partisan exchanged his warm peasant house for a bivouac in the open air, there was, perforce, an element of desperation in the personality of such an individual. Still, many of those who joined the partisans made the following sober calculation: the probability of getting killed in a partisan detachment was not very high, and there were some definite advantages to being a partisan both when the Red Army returned (especially during call-up to that army) and after the war. In contrast, policemen or HiWis (Hilfswillige, German for “voluntary assistant”) who deserted to the partisans in 1943–44 were, in principle, people already somewhat predisposed to adventure, since they had entrusted their fates to the communists. Thus, partisan units consisted partly of decisive people with a tendency toward self-sufficiency and personal initiative; at the very least they were quick-witted and reacted swiftly. There were adequate numbers of intelligent people, including the odd intellectual, such as Petro Vershyhora, who was a filmmaker before World War II. The preponderant majority of partisan detachments comprised men between the ages of 16 and 35, whom Anton Odukha, commander of one of the largest partisan units, described with great warmth: “The main mass of partisans was comprised of young people, our Soviet youth, merry, buoyant, energetic, educated in Soviet schools, the Komsomol, and the party … Youth, bubbling with energy even in the difficult conditions of partisan life, fought its way outside.”40 Young Soviet partisans demonstrated this in the form of daring acts of sabotage or hooliganism. At the same time, detachments also included utterly diverse groups of citizens, which led to their “marginalization,” as noted justly by the historian Kenneth Slepyan.41 It is no accident that the Ukrainian nationalist Maksym

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The Personnel of Partisan Formations  •  165 Skorupsky, who was destined to join a Soviet detachment in 1943, noted its heterogeneous nature: “A real ‘motley crew,’ all swearing up a storm and demoralized.”42 Many years later even Vasyl Yermolenko, veteran of the Vinnytsia unit, with no trace of acrimony toward his former fellow partisans, called the partisans of his unit, including himself, a “motley crew.”43

The Numerical Strength of the Ukrainian Partisans As some researchers conjecture, the official number of Ukrainian partisans, 501,000, appeared in 1975 because of the Ukrainian nomenklatura’s determination to present Soviet Ukraine as the republic that contributed the most to the partisan war. In the comparatively small Belarusian SSR there were 374,000 partisans during the war.44 By 1967, the estimated numerical strength of Ukrainian partisan formations was scaled back to 357,750, as attested by a note stored among the documents of the personal collection of Demian Korotchenko, the trustee of the Ukrainian Staff of the Partisan Movement.45 Two years earlier the final volume of the official history of the Soviet–German war mentioned the figure of 220,000 partisans.46 The official figures were first mentioned in a speech delivered by Khrushchev on 1 March 1944, during a session of the Supreme Soviet of the Ukrainian SSR: according to the first secretary of the CC CP(B)U, 228 partisan detachments totaling 60,000 men had operated in Ukraine,47 a figure that is not far from the truth. A document signed on 20 August 1944 by Bondarev, head of the Operations Department of the UShPD, states that 1,200 large partisan units, detachments, and groups totaling 112,000 men operated in Ukraine during the war.48 This figure includes the 30,000 partisans of the NKVD of the Ukrainian SSR and the CP(B)U who “disappeared without a trace” in 1941–42, as well as a certain number of “local” partisans who were “discovered” in 1944. In May 1945 a commission appointed by the CC CP(B)U unveiled data on 200,000 people, including 20,000 partisans who were based outside the territory of the Ukrainian SSR from the fall of 1944 to May 1945—in Czechoslovakia, Poland, Hungary, and Romania.49 Obviously, this number was inflated not only because of interpolations but also because information continued to arrive about small partisan groups and groups of survivors that were operating without any communication with the Center. The simple mechanism behind the avalanche-like increase in the numbers of Soviet partisans was uncovered during the field research for this book. Since keeping records was carried out exclusively by large units

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166  •  Stalin’s Commandos and large detachments, after the war a person could pass himself off as a partisan on the basis of statements made by members of a partisan group that had been operating nearby, especially commanders. Such individuals issued the necessary information for a bribe, an offer of services, as well as a “thank you” to relatives, friends, superiors, and lovers. Veteran commanders also had political reasons for doing this: the larger a veteran cell in a village or small town, the greater the importance and fame that accrued to its head. All this was hushed up by high-ranking former partisans, including Heroes of the Soviet Union, who created regional political clans in Ukraine in 1944–65.50 This was regarded with equanimity by the party leaders, who operated within the framework of the myth of the “people’s war” and therefore needed living proof. When necessary, including on commemorative dates, the veterans were trotted out in front of the Soviet and international public. Therefore, taking into account the above-cited data from the wartime period, one may reasonably conclude that between 1941 and 1944 approximately 100,000 partisans came through the ranks of partisan groups, detachments, and large units that were created by and subordinated to the NKVD of the Ukrainian SSR and the UShPD. According to a KGB memorandum recorded in the postwar period, an additional 22 partisan detachments and groups of the NKVD–NKGB USSR, totaling 6,401 fighters, operated in Ukraine in 1941–44.51 These figures are most likely inflated. Fragmentary sources provide sufficient proof that during the war approximately 4,000 partisans attached to the departments headed by Vsevolod Merkulov and Pavel Sudoplatov operated in the Ukrainian SSR. Partisans from the NKGB of the Ukrainian SSR may be added to this number: Between October 1943 and 9 May 1945 alone, 53 operative-Chekist, sabotage-reconnaissance groups and detachments totaling 780 people were dispatched to the enemy’s rear [for the most part by plane—A.G.]; operating in occupied territory, they reinforced their ranks significantly thanks to the local population as well as prisoners of war who had escaped from the camps, and thus the personnel composition of detachments and groups totaled 3,928 people.52

If approximately half of these fighters operated on the territory of Soviet Ukraine, then one can conclude that roughly 2,000 partisans attached to the NKGB of the Ukrainian SSR were active in the Ukrainian SSR in 1943–44.

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The Personnel of Partisan Formations  •  167 Researchers do not have access to precise information on partisan detachments that were attached to army intelligence (the Red Army and the GRU USSR), which operated in Ukraine, but on the basis of indirect information it may be supposed that up to 5,000 men passed through their ranks. To summarize the above, it may be assumed that during the Soviet– German war approximately 115,000 people served in all the detachments and large units of the NKVD of the Ukrainian SSR, the UShPD, the NKVD–NKGB USSR, and military intelligence services. At the same time, the maximum number of “organized” partisans—members of special forces that operated in Ukraine—in late 1943 to early 1944 stood at 50,000.

The Ethnic Composition of Ukrainian Partisan Formations Both the social origins of fighters and commanders and the ethnic composition of UShPD formations corresponded to the make-up of Ukraine’s population. Ukrainians, the titular nationality, made up the majority of the personnel in UShPD detachments; furthermore, Ukrainians numerically outstripped partisans of all other ethnic groups together in the partisan detachments and units of the Ukrainian SSR. In other words, the Soviet partisans of Ukraine were Ukrainian not only in the national sense but in the ethnic sense as well. In 1930 Ukrainians made up 75 per cent of the population of Ukraine (within the current borders), and during the war they formed 57.2 per cent of the 11 largest partisan units. This is explained by the relatively high participation of Belarusians and Russians in the ranks of the Ukrainian partisans. In 1930 Belarusians only made up 0.2 per cent of Ukraine’s population, yet in the ranks of the 11 largest units they formed 7.7 per cent—40 times more. In 1941–44 Soviet Ukrainian partisans frequently operated in the forests of Belarus. For example, Fedorov recalled that during a raid that took place in the spring of 1943 his unit “carried out a mobilization of personnel in the district of Lelchitsy [Pinsk oblast, Belarusian SSR], where more than 600 men were mobilized. Thanks to these new reinforcements, the unit then numbered 2,500 people.”53 Although Russians made up 8 per cent of Ukraine’s population in 1930, they represented one-quarter of the personnel in the 11 largest units of the UShPD. In 1941–43 the many detachments and large units of the NKVD of the Ukrainian SSR and the UShPD—initially, the majority—were based either in the north-eastern part of the republic, where the percentage of Russians was quite high, or in the RSFSR. Russians also formed a

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168  •  Stalin’s Commandos preponderant majority in the Red Army, which explains why Russians made up the majority of stragglers who had been cut off behind enemy lines in the great encirclement battles (okruzhentsy) or were escaped prisoners of war who joined the partisans. In 1941–43, when nearly most or all of Ukraine’s territory was occupied, the cadres that were sent from behind the front line did not consist exclusively of Ukrainians but other peoples of the USSR, among whom Russians were numerically predominant. Out of 53 commanders of the large units and brigades of the UShPD, 29 (55 per cent) were Ukrainian by nationality; 18 (34 per cent) were Russians; and the remaining six (11 per cent) were other nationalities.54 Roughly the same picture emerges from the analyzed data cited in the preceding chapter concerning commanders, commissars, and chiefs of staff of large partisan units and detachments who were awarded the title of Hero of the Soviet Union: out of 48 people, 26 (54 per cent) were Ukrainians, 18 (37.5 per cent) were Russians, and four were different nationalities. Relations between the two largest ethnic groups in the ranks of the Ukrainian partisans were generally peaceful, but rare exceptions and conflicts existed. In particular, objective information about cases of Ukrainians’ purported disloyalty to the Soviet system morphed into exaggerated rumors that Oleksii Fedorov later recalled with some resentment: Among individual partisan detachments, particularly in Orel oblast [Russia], misunderstandings led to harmful anti-Bolshevik views in relation to the Ukrainian people and Ukrainian partisans […] People said that the Ukrainian people do not want to fight, that the Ukrainian partisans are not fighting the Germans, etc. … When the commander of a large partisan unit, C[omrade] Fedorov [Fedorov refers to himself in the third person here—A.G.] began speaking with them in the Ukrainian language, they gazed at him in astonishment and asked him several times: “You are a Ukrainian?” … After C[omrade] Fedorov cited a number of facts relating to the Ukrainian people’s struggle against fascism … this mistrust toward the Ukrainian people and toward the Ukrainian partisans evaporated.55

But such moods had no impact on the daily life of UShPD detachments. Even the intelligence reports that were written by OUN underground members who were infected by Russophobia did not note any tensions between Russians and Ukrainians inside the Soviet Ukrainian partisan units. Eastern Slavs (Ukrainians, Russians, and Belarusians) made up 90 per cent of the personnel of the 11 largest units of the UShPD. Sydir

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The Personnel of Partisan Formations  •  169 Kovpak lumped together the fighters of his large unit as Russians: “The endurance of our fighters, germane only to Russian men, should be especially noted.”56 The representatives of two national minorities, Poles and Jews, who differed markedly from the titular population of the Ukrainian SSR, were also members of Ukrainian partisan formations. In 1930 the percentage of Poles in Ukraine (within current borders) stood at 5.4 per cent, while Poles made up only 3.6 per cent of the 11 largest units of the UShPD. The majority of Ukrainian Poles lived in the western oblasts of the Ukrainian SSR, which until 1939 had belonged to Poland, and where the red partisans had been barely present in 1941–42. In September 1939 the Poles viewed the USSR as an enemy that had divided their country together with Hitler, while the new Soviet power regarded the Polish minority of Western Ukraine as the carrier of bourgeois statehood, a stance that was accompanied by all concomitant repressive consequences. Thus, an SD report dated 27 June 1941 noted that in former Eastern Poland the Polish population uniformly welcomed the arrival of the Wehrmacht.57 However, the Germans quickly revealed their attitude to the Slavs, Ukrainian–Polish antagonism escalated, and anti-Nazi directives from London were dispatched to the Polish nationalist underground. The mood of the Polish minority changed significantly. An SD review dated 9 October 1942 noted the Poles’ hope that after the victory the Bolsheviks would permit the establishment of a Polish state: “The Polish rural population’s assistance to gangs is observed again and again.”58 Anton Brynsky, the commander of a GRU detachment stationed in the Volyn region from the fall of 1942 onwards, recalled that, after making contact with the Polish underground and the residents of the Polissia region, Soviet intelligence agents began receiving assistance: “Wherever we encountered Polish workers, we heard in their words … the conviction that Poland would restore its independence with the help of the Soviet people. Poles who did not take part in any organizations also helped us: they reported valuable information, served as guides, hid our people, supplied medications and weapons.”59 Ultimately, as a result of the Red Army’s victory at Stalingrad and the ethnic cleansing launched by the UPA, Western Ukrainian Poles became loyal to the Soviet side. In the summer of 1943, after his 100-day journey to occupied territory, Martynov, head of the UShPD’s Intelligence Department, declared: “Facts relating to the Poles’ [AK or policemen—A.G.] actions against the partisans, even together with the Germans, have not been observed.”60

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170  •  Stalin’s Commandos A full picture is revealed in an analytical note written by an unknown associate of the SB OUN in October 1943: The Poles are acting as: 1) the Germans’ lackeys; as 2) red partisans; 3) as an independent armed force [Armia Krajowa—A.G.] … To this day, no significant actions of the Poles against the reds, or the reverse, nor against Polish Schutzmanns or against Polish gangs have been confirmed. This leads to the conclusion that the Germans, like the Bolsheviks, are using the Poles as a weapon against us; at the same time, the Poles are not at all ready to perish with the Germans or to give themselves over fully to the Bolsheviks … For the most part, the active Polish element has saved itself and … is preparing for a large, independent action at an auspicious moment [Operation Storm—A.G.].61

Stalin planned to weaken the AK and draw the Poles under Soviet influence in order to ease the process of installing a communist regime in Poland. For this reason, the uniformed services of the USSR, including the various staffs of the partisan movement, devoted the most scrupulous attention to the Polish issue, beginning in late 1942.62 In the spring and summer of 1943 the UShPD circulated directives to local areas about the need to draw as many Poles as possible into the ranks of the Soviet partisans.63 By the beginning of 1943 the Tadeusz Kos´ciuszko Detachment was formed as part of Saburov’s unit from the core of a Polish–Jewish group that was once part of a GRU partisan detachment commanded by Captain Kaplun. Its commander was the pedagogue and musician Robert Satanowski, who already had links with the communist underground in the 1930s. In a memorandum addressed to Saburov, Satanowski openly admitted his personal motivation and chief goal: to recruit Poles into the ranks of the Soviet commandos: “The red Polish p[artisan] d[etachment] will be a school for Poland’s future socialist cadres.”64 In the summer of 1943, a group of Volynian Poles, who had been brought together for the purpose of self-defense against the Banderites, served as the nucleus of the Dzerzhinsky Detachment, formed in the Khochyn woods and placed under the command of a Red Army officer named Jan Galicki. Initially, the detachment was part of the large Rivne-based Ivan Fedoriv unit No. 2, but afterwards it was transferred to the newly created UShPD brigade under the command of Ivan Byrka.65 In February 1943 a German guard battalion consisting of Polissian residents deserted. German commanders were killed, the Ukrainians went into the UPA, the Belarusians headed home, and the Poles, led by the

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The Personnel of Partisan Formations  •  171 former policeman Mikołaj Kunicki (“Mucha”), formed the nucleus of the Chapaev Detachment in Behma’s large Rivne-based unit.66 Other Polish–Soviet partisan detachments were formed and gradually merged into the three above-mentioned brigades and a partisan detachment commanded by L. Lutsevych. In April 1944, in keeping with a resolution issued by the CC CP(B) U, and later by the State Defense Committee (GKO) (Stalin), these four formations (totaling 1,863 people)67 were transferred to the Polish Staff of the Partisan Movement that had been formed from UShPD cadres. If one includes the Poles who served in other large units of the UShPD, detachments of the RU GSh KA and the NKGB, and small pro-Soviet groups, then it is safe to say that a total of 5,000 Poles passed through the ranks of Soviet partisan formations in Western Ukraine. Keeping in mind the number of Poles killed by the UPA (up to 100,000 people in 1943–44), as well as the efforts of the Soviet side to bring Poles into their formations, the figure of 5,000 is insignificant. Even though they provided support to the Soviet Ukrainian partisans, the Polish residents of Volyn and Galicia were unwilling to join Soviet detachments because they were under the Armia Krajowa’s anti-Soviet influence. With the aid of propaganda, the AK sought to thwart the mass recruitment of Poles into communist structures.68 Polish–Soviet partisan detachments were characterized by certain mutually determined features. First of all, their loyalty to the communist authorities was rather weak.69 During the two years of Soviet rule (1939– 41) the population of Western Ukraine could not accustom itself to Soviet totalitarianism and was not part of its “success.” Second, these formations were infiltrated by agents of both the AK and the German secret services. Third, there was weak discipline in the Polish–Soviet detachments. In trying to draw as many Poles as possible into its structures, the UShPD demonstrated greater “tolerance” to the past history of the personnel of the Polish detachments. Fourth, there was a very high level of internal conflicts in these detachments.70 In addition, Polish–Soviet partisans were notorious for the brutality of the terror that they waged against Western Ukrainians.71 The latter point was the result of both the long-standing Ukrainian–Polish conflict, which escalated steadily until late 1942, and the massacres that were carried out by the UPA in 1943–44. Unlike the Ukrainian and Polish partisan movements, there was no Jewish partisan movement as such in Ukraine during the war. Between 1917 and 1941 the Jewish population of the Soviet Union was finally offered long-awaited equality, which was supplemented in 1930 by the policy of intensive assimilation. On the whole, Soviet Jews became

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172  •  Stalin’s Commandos members of Ukraine’s partisan formations just as Soviet citizens of other ethnic groups did. Various Jewish political forces existed in interwar Poland,72 and, unlike the OUN, they were legal. Therefore, when the USSR captured Western Ukraine in 1939, it was comparatively easy for the NKVD to institute repressions against leading members of Jewish parties. Then came the German invasion, and the Nazis completed the destruction of Jewish political structures by launching the Holocaust. That is why no organizing group capable of serving as the foundation for partisan detachments remained. Groups of survivors who had escaped from ghettos and concentration camps did not espouse any particular military or political goals and, depending on the circumstances, they attached themselves to any force, generally gravitating toward the Soviets, that proclaimed internationalism and occasionally upheld this principle. In 1930 Jews formed 6.5 per cent of Ukraine’s population, but in the 11 largest partisan units the percentage of Jews only stood at 2.11 per cent. According to other data, Jews made up around 3 per cent of the personnel of UShPD formations.73 Most of Ukraine’s Jewish population lived in the western or rightbank oblasts of the Ukrainian SSR, where there were few Soviet partisan formations in 1941–42 (i.e. during the peak period of the Nazis’ antiSemitic terror). During this one-and-a-half-year period the Jewish minority did not put up mass resistance to the Nazis. This was indicated indirectly in a report dated 1 November 1942, written by Heinrich Schöne, general commissar for Volyn and Podillia, to Erich Koch: Little can be reported about Jewry because definitive evacuation [a euphemism for arrest and extermination—A.G.] has been carried out in the majority of regions; but at the present moment it is possible to note more frequently that this rabble is defending itself, and in recent days serious wounds have been inflicted once again on members of punitive detachments carrying out resettlement tasks.74

The situation for Jews who were fleeing to the forests, swamps, and mountains was aggravated by the fact that the Germans controlled Volyn until early 1943, and Galicia until early 1944. Thus, the majority of Jewish groups had been exterminated or they were eking out a pitiful existence. From the very beginning of the war the Soviet leadership was flooded with reports from various sources about the extermination of the Jews. However, the administrative organs of the Ukrainian partisans based

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The Personnel of Partisan Formations  •  173 behind the front lines paid little attention to the “Jewish issue,” unlike the “Polish issue.” Inasmuch as the Soviet Ukrainian leaders did not have any long-term plans regarding the Jews, it is very likely that they had little interest in the fate of the Jewish minority. On the other hand, the Ukrainian population was mistrustful of the Jews in the 1940s.75 According to Stepan Oleksenko, secretary of the clandestine oblast committee of the CP(B)U in Kamianets-Podilsky, Nazi agitators did much to inflame anti-Jewish moods: “In every city they publish a Ukrainian-language newspaper … They issue numerous appeals, leaflets, and color posters. All publications have gone crazy over JudaeoBolshevism. The favorite topic is: all the Jewish Bolsheviks are to blame.”76 There was also an insensitive attitude to Jews in Soviet detachments, where Jews were accused of existential fatalism, greed, and cowardice. In an interview that took place many years after the war Albert Tsessarsky, the physician who was attached to the NKVD’s Pobediteli Detachment and had observed the mass executions of the Jews from a distance, reported how he was astonished and somewhat embarrassed by the “silence”77 of the victims. According to the reminiscences of Semen Dodyk, who had escaped from a ghetto, when he was being inducted into the Lenin Partisan Cavalry Brigade he was “instructed” thus: Jews “went to the slaughter like a flock of sheep,” and Dodyk should not be such a coward.78 Anton Brynsky recalled that one of his subordinates was a former businessman from Warsaw named Garaskin, who had lost his mind as a result of his life in the ghetto and the constant danger to his survival. Declaring that he had hidden some valuables, he tried to persuade one of the commanders to flee to America. The partisans were irritated by the lunatic’s “anti-Soviet” chatter, but they were unable to persuade him to reveal the location of his buried treasure: “We had to rid ourselves of the Warsaw capitalist. But his gold is probably still lying around, buried somewhere in the forests of Volyn.”79 In early September 1942 Dmitrii Medvedev radioed his chief, Pavel Sudoplatov, the head of the 4th Directorate of the NKVD USSR, asking him what do with the groups of survivors: “All around we are encountering groups of Jews, around 10–20 people each, who escaped execution. Their wives and children were shot. They thirst for revenge. A partisan detachment can be formed. Weapons and ammunition are needed.”80 Sudoplatov decided to transfer the “mobilizational reserve” that had sprung up to the TsShPD, where he forwarded a statement. On 7 September 1942 Ponomarenko made a notation on this document: “To Major [next word is illegible—A.G.]. Establish contact with these people, create an independent detachment.” However, it was

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174  •  Stalin’s Commandos not destined to be formed. Several months later Medvedev, who had received a corresponding directive from Sudoplatov, decided to send the Jews to Belarus in the company of a group of fighters. According to Tsessarsky’s testimony, the partisans, together with their wards, numbering approximately 200 people, decided to stop for a rest a short distance from the main quarters of the Pobediteli Detachment. The Jews refused to dig ditches as part of the necessary facilities for the quarters, which displeased the convoy. According to the veteran, it became clear during the march that this group of Jews had also been reluctant to leave Volyn because they did not want to leave behind their hidden gold.81 The doctor’s account is doubtful, especially considering the fact that by virtue of their prewar occupations most Jews were not suited to physical labor, and they had been psychologically traumatized by Nazi repression and harassment. This may be precisely the reason why they refused to carry out the order to build earthworks. One way or another, Tsessarsky’s reminiscences indicate that even before reaching Belarus the partisans released the Jews, leaving them to the mercy of fate, and then returned to their base. Another veteran, Shmuel Tiktin, provides a different account of this incident: They organized a Jewish detachment, that partisan one, they supplied a few rifles, and sent [the detachment] to dangerous places that were already partisan lands […] For the most part, these were people who had never served in the army, were unsuited to this kind of life; there was no vitality as such. And literally on the third or fourth day, when they were being shot at by the Banderites, they scattered. Well, then, you know, it is very painful to say, anyone from this group who fell into Medvedev’s hands was simply shot. Before my eyes [I see] Holub from Berezne, a young man of 23; when he joined the detachment he even had a rifle; in front of my very eyes they strangled him, you know, with a rope, a slip-knot.82

After Kovpak’s men occupied the ghetto in the city of Skalat, Ternopil oblast, they carried out their own selection among the liberated prisoners. Leaving some in the care of local residents, the partisans departed with a small number of Jews who were fit for front-line service. An AK intelligence report mentions the Sumy unit: “They are disbanding the Jewish camps that they come across; however, they treat them [the Jews] with ill will and do not take them with them.”83 The remaining ghetto prisoners initially headed for the Carpathian Mountains, and many of them returned later to Skalat.84

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The Personnel of Partisan Formations  •  175 According to information provided by an informant codenamed “Zahorsky,” during the march into the Carpathians, exhaustion in the ranks of Kovpak’s unit heightened the tense relations among the various nationalities: “Some partisans want a speedy end to the war. Jews are not very keen on performing service [it is possible that they were the emaciated former residents of the Skalat ghetto—A.G.], for which they are cursed by the partisans. Discipline in the detachment has fallen significantly; this is explained by fatigue during the raid.”85 Strokach’s reaction to this report is unknown. The disapproving attitude of Kovpak’s partisans toward the Jews, which was manifested in the form of discrimination in the detachment, was also noted by the Banderites.86 After the war Zvi Fenster, who survived this period in Galicia, recounted the rumors about the anti-Semitism of Kovpak’s partisans: “The partisans’ attitude to those Jews who joined them was not always proper. One of the Jews from the partisan detachment (the only one in this detachment) recounted that, despite his demands and insistence, they refused to give him a weapon.”87 Nevertheless, the commands of large units combatted anti-Semitism. According to the testimony of State Security Captain Korotkov, on 23 March 1943 a fighter in the Sumy unit called a Jewish female partisan a “kike,” after which she lodged a complaint with the unit’s commissar, Semen Rudnev: “He summoned the company’s political instructor and in my presence and a number of other people issued a directive: ‘Muster the company, punch him in the face in the presence of all the fighters; if he does this again, he will be shot.’”88 There were fewer manifestations of anti-Semitism in the ChernihivVolyn unit. Fedorov’s men frequently offered assistance to groups of Jewish survivors. For example, the journal of the Kalinin Detachment records the following entry: “On 28.8.42 the Germans attacked the Jews in the Parchiv woods. Groups of partisans numbering 75 men went to the aid of the Jews. As a result of the battle, 7 Germans were killed, 5 Germans were wounded. Kolubsnov, Boichenko distinguished themselves.”89 In late October 1943 several Jewish families in the Volyn region begged to be allowed to join the Stalin Detachment; Commander Hryhorii Balytsky went there to conduct negotiations. After the discussion he recorded the following wryly sympathetic entry in his journal: “They make for very courageous warriors: one is lame, another is blind, and a third is totally unfit. Well, we have to help them. Just think: for 13 months they did not clap eyes on any people; they lived like savages in the bush.”90 Occasionally, Jews found hiding in the forests were disarmed; they were not merged with Soviet detachments but were left defenseless in the

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176  •  Stalin’s Commandos woods.91 It is very likely that the red partisans were governed first and foremost by personal and military interests: they sought to safeguard their own detachments and were reluctant to burden themselves with these Jewish families. But xenophobia could also have played a definite role in these actions. One way in which Jews differed from Poles is that the UShPD opposed the creation of separate Jewish detachments, the reason being that there was no political need for this. One should also not exclude the possibility that Strokach and the CP(B)U overseers of the partisan staffs were afraid of providing fodder for the mill of Nazi propaganda and Ukrainian and Polish nationalist agitators portraying the Soviet partisans as a tool of “JudaeoBolshevism.” Jews were more or less equally divided among large units and detachments of the UShPD. Ninety per cent of Soviet-Jewish partisans were rank-and-file combatants, 8 per cent were named to command posts, and 2 per cent served as political instructors or commissars.92 In one case, Robert Satanowski, who was a Jew, headed a large (Polish) unit. On the whole, the situation in Ukraine was no different from that in other occupied territories of the USSR: “The Jewish element was present in large partisan units, but it was neither a leading one nor numerically strong.”93 There were hardly any Gypsies94 (Roma) in Soviet detachments.

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5 Problematic Questions in the History of Soviet Partisan Warfare According to the way the partisans are portrayed in neo-Soviet semi-official newspapers of Belarus and Russia, Soviet fighters fed and clothed themselves for the most part thanks to the enemy, and they fought as though they were in a wilderness. Meanwhile, in the consciousness of people who lived under German occupation, and to a certain degree their descendants, the forest soldiers were, as a rule, individuals who engaged in acts of requisition against civilians. But the most vivid mark left on popular memory is the fact that the activities of the red partisans incurred Nazi punitive actions against the civilian population. Therefore, these two seemingly separate, yet in reality closely linked problems are examined together in this chapter.

The Supply of Food and Clothing to the Partisans There was no system for supplying the partisans in place from the beginning of the war.1 Partisan-training centers, whether NKVD or partisan schools of the UShPD and TsShPD, taught recruits how to fight. But to the present day no detailed instruction on where the partisans were supposed to obtain food and clothing has been found in the archives. High-level documents dated 1941–42, which pertain to the question of food deliveries to detachments, make fleeting references to the vague and enigmatic terms “self-sufficiency” and “at the expense of local resources.”2 A small exception to the rule of improvisation was the establishment on still-Soviet territory of partisan bases and storehouses, from which the Germans or policemen quickly chased away detachments. As a result, the partisans wheedled some food from peasants, especially if detachments remained temporarily in the districts in which they had been formed.3 The majority of UShPD formations, however, became raiding detachments, while the command nucleus of NKVD and GRU groups, even stationary ones, consisted of people who had been sent from behind the front line.

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178  •  Stalin’s Commandos Requisitioning became the usual practice. First and foremost, belongings were confiscated from collaborators: all food and clothing was seized from their families. According to German intelligence agents, the head of the Chernihiv-Volyn unit made use of this confiscation as a kind of material incentive: Left on his own, Fedorov began to pick out the officers and soldiers who had escaped encirclement; he succeeded in recruiting many of them by force of weapons, he kept many with him, plying them with vodka and promising personal gains thanks to robberies of representatives of the occupation authorities who had been appointed for services from among Russians and Ukrainians. He killed village elders and members of the police, and he distributed their valuables—clothing and property, to his bandits.4

The diary kept by Hryhorii Balytsky, commander of one of this unit’s detachments, indicates that this view was not groundless: 15 September 1942 … I made the decision to teach a lesson to the police in the village of Korma [Belarus] … Things were set in motion. Policemen’s farms were destroyed along with their spawn [together with their families—A.G.]. Articles indispensable to the partisans were seized … The fellows lived it up for real. 16 September 1942. Distribution morning came; we divided up the bread, eggs, and pigs … It was decided after the operation to divide all articles and foodstuffs proportionately among the groups, but it turned out that Allah himself could not figure it out.5

A class approach was applied during requisitions: well-to-do peasants were thoroughly looted, and even killed—whether they were loyal to the Soviets or not was a matter of secondary importance. For example, an AK reconnaissance report noted that in August and September 1943 the reds in the Ternopil region were “supplying themselves with provisions in villages, where they often pay for the food … In towns they are robbing German and Ukrainian shops and warehouses … In a couple of cases, they took bonus that the peasants had received for completed deliveries of agricultural products [to the Germans].”6 According to documents produced by the same Polish underground movement, “small partisan detachments appeared once again” on the territory of Lviv oblast in early 1944. “They are looting [state] estates and rich farmers, not excluding Poles.”7

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Problematic Questions in the History of Soviet Partisan Warfare  •  179 However, there were comparatively few collaborators or well-to-do peasants; moreover, it was not always convenient for the partisans to waste time in ferreting them out. For that reason, forcible confiscations of foodstuffs and belongings from the neutral civilian population was an everyday practice carried out on a significant scale. Information about this began reaching the Germans immediately after the war broke out,8 and in a report prepared by the German security service in August 1942 the partisans are portrayed as ordinary criminals: Looting attacks are a daily [feature of] the state of affairs … Lone individuals repeatedly try—at first, requesting or thieving—to obtain foodstuffs. Assembling in a group … they threaten with violence and recklessly shoot intractable individuals on the spot … During clashes with the gendarmerie and representatives of law and order a certain proportion of bandits is shot … Within a few days the number of looting attacks in the district of Zhytomyr reached 46.9

The partisan Vasyl Yermolenko, a member of the large Vinnytsia unit, recalled that they did not have a special procurement team: So today this platoon is going for food and tomorrow—another platoon [will go]. Wagons are being allotted—people on them … And later you enter a house: “Please, what can you give?” … If I come with a submachine gun, who will not give me something? … [It happened that] people hid food from us, they buried it in the ground.10

Hryhorii Balytsky, commander of the Stalin Detachment, recorded in his diary that in the Briansk forest partisan detachments commanded by Kononykhin “beat peasants with ramrods, saying that there were no horse collars. They beat with ramrods … also those who begged that their clothing not be taken away.”11 As a rule, in “Soviet” oblasts (territories that had been part of the USSR before 1939) only some foodstuffs and very little clothing (or none at all) were confiscated from peasants, so as not to exacerbate relations.12 And even in Galicia during the Carpathian raid, in the course of confiscations of valuables Kovpak and his men showed some mercy. A Banderite document describes an incident that took place in Stanyslaviv (modern-day IvanoFrankivsk) oblast: “In the village of Pasichna a partisan entered a house and wanted to take a mule away; then an old woman who was in the house began to scream and curse … In response to her cries the partisan left the mule alone and asked her to give him something to eat.”13 Prior to his

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180  •  Stalin’s Commandos return from the raid Kovpak circulated an order among hostile residents: “The main thing in the forthcoming march is the strictest maintenance of secrecy. Not a single fighter should appear among the population; it is necessary to steal foodstuffs from the population.”14 Starting in late 1942, the UShPD introduced some corrective measures, mainly—with the aid of wireless messages—a system for acquiring material valuables. However, the Center’s directives were contradictory. For example, on 23 May 1943, following a meeting in the Polissia region attended by several partisan commanders and representatives of the CC CP(B) U, a resolution was adopted, one of whose points stated: “The purchase of foodstuffs from the peasants is to be carried out only in an organized fashion, through existing economic teams that must be reinforced with the most conscientious, leading fighters and commanders.”15 To this day no documents have been discovered that would indicate that in 1943–44 the command of large units began to send the staunchest partisans to gather provisions. Partisan commanders knew that they would receive incentives for competently conducted acts of sabotage and combat—not economic—operations. This resolution of 23 May 1943 “straightened out” some commanders who had acted incorrectly from the point of view of the CC CP(B)U: “Condemn and ban the harmful, non-party practice of taxes in kind on peasants in the enemy’s rear, which is being carried out by individual partisan detachments, [and] which is causing dissatisfaction among the local population and establishing unsuccessful, non-Soviet relations with it.” Important party workers, by virtue of their remoteness from the capitalist system of production and demand, did not understand that, on the contrary, a well-thought-out and clear-cut system of levying a “tribute” for the benefit of large partisan units might have been more positively perceived by the peasants as a natural manifestation of a state policy, rather than as chaotic and unpredictable requisitions. Stepan Oleksenko, secretary of the Kamianets-Podilsky oblast committee of the CP(B)U, indirectly pointed to the UShPD’s inability to think things through with regard to the issue of supplying the partisans: No one pays any special attention to the so-called “economic operations”; even in the detachments themselves people look at them as at something that is prescribed. And during the acquisition of foodstuffs there were large operations. In the spring of 1943 [and] in the months of June and July, when we had no bread, four of our detachments stormed the cities of Rokytne and Horodnytsia three times in order to take some bread for ourselves by force.16

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Problematic Questions in the History of Soviet Partisan Warfare  •  181 The theft of foodstuffs was often committed in a fairly original way. The NKVD of the Ukrainian SSR informed the party organs that the partisans of one of the detachments that were operating in the Kyiv region in the summer of 1942, “under the guise of a German transport unit, drove into a village and seized food prepared for the Germans.”17 On Polish territory Soviet partisans, who were primed by the leader­ ship to carry out a special political role, conducted rather organized confiscations of foodstuffs and occasionally even concluded agreements with the Armia Krajowa;18 in a number of cases, they paid local residents for forage and food.19 In Western Ukraine, however, the economic provisioning of the partisans usually took the form of all-out looting of the Ukrainian population. On the one hand, the Banderites in Volyn disrupted the majority of German requisitions in 1943, with the result that a large quantity of food remained in the hands of the peasants. The Ukrainian nationalists tried to save part of it for themselves for future battles against the NKVD. As the caustic-tongued Taras “Bulba” (Borovets) wrote, it was not always possible to maintain supplies of food, clothing, and footwear: “All deliveries were forcibly collected from the population and hidden ‘secretly’ in broad daylight in pits dug in the middle of a field and in forests … The following day Bolshevik-Polish partisans rushed there … they dug up all the hidden belongings and transported it to their bases.”20 The radio operators of the large Volyn-based Lenin unit informed the UShPD about the following phenomenon: “The concealed, abundant food stores of the nationalists, which could be re-concealed and handed over to the Red Army, are used up without any benefit, for neither the population nor the large unit needs them.”21 On the other hand, the nationalists attacked small partisan groups, especially procurement teams. For this reason, the majority of the reds became exasperated with the population and no longer saw a possibility of winning local Ukrainian residents over to their side. Typical descriptions, written by the Banderites, of actions that were carried out by their communist opponents are here provided. The juncture of Rivne and Kamianets-Podilsky oblasts, September 1943: “The red partisans have been spotted blowing up railway lines, robbing villages, destroying grain … They are taking away everything in villages: the last grain of salt from salt-cellars, even salted cucumbers and honey from hives.”22 Volyn oblast: “They utterly fleece every arrested person—of clothing and footwear—and release [them] naked; at the same time, one cannot do without beatings … 14.09. A Bolshevik gang looted the village of Berestiany [Tsuman district]. They even removed people’s shoes and

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182  •  Stalin’s Commandos clothing on the streets.”23 Lviv oblast 1944: “A hungry gang was robbing anything it could get its hands in the houses … They are taking away literally all clothing, even children’s.”24 But some commanders were nonetheless concerned, if one can use the word, with “saving face,” even in Western Ukraine. For example, in a letter of 10 December 1943, Ivan Fedorov, commander of Rivne unit No. 2, proposed to Oleksii Fedorov, the commander of the Chernihiv-Volyn unit, that they divide the “taxed villages”: I see that not a damned thing will come about unless we impose order, even if undesirable, but practice shows that it’s necessary in part of the territory. There isn’t a day that passes that my people don’t report about meeting your people in the very same villages. This ends up with us milking the same people several times a day. People are clearly ticked off, and they ought to be. So let’s agree and fix it so all personnel knows the extent of their territory for procuring foodstuffs and clothing, and at the same time, for scouting and working with the people … The reason I want this is so that later, dirt doesn’t get thrown on our work with the people.25

In late December 1943 Ivan Shitov, commander of the Ternopil unit named after Khrushchev, which was based in the Polissia region, sent a written request to Chubenko, commander of the neighboring Khmelnytsky Detachment, not to carry out requisitions on “his” territory: In the villages that support us and the villages of the district where our large unit is located, your people are carrying out unlawful procurements of grain, foodstuffs, cattle, and other things. Regardless of the fact that the commandants of these villages, availing themselves of our directives, are rejecting procurement, your people, engaging in outrages, are themselves, with the force of arms, procuring cattle, right down to oxen hitched to wagons … grain, potatoes, and other things. They are rude to the population, they are inflicting offenses.26

Such explanations of the state of relations in Western Ukraine, frequently accompanied by wireless messages sent to the UShPD, remained typical until the end of the occupation, which highlights the poorly developed nature of levying the “food tax.” However, as Aleksandr Saburov wrote, the volume of the requisitions was adequate: “The partisans were always supplied with food. The partisans went without food only in certain exceptional cases.”27 But a great gap was

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Problematic Questions in the History of Soviet Partisan Warfare  •  183 always observed between the supplying of the command–political ranks and the rank and file. Vasyl Yermolenko, who served in two large units and communicated with the partisans Oleksii Fedorov and Sydir Kovpak, came to the following conclusion: “The leadership always had everything. A fighter could be hungry, but they always had everything—vodka, whatever you want.”28 The deputy commander for intelligence in the Shchors Detachment, Yu. Trapezon, made similar statements during his interrogation by the Banderites: “There are two types of kitchens: 1) communist staff; 2) rank and file. To a certain degree this sparks indignation in the detachments.”29 The command often organized huge banquets for themselves. In his journal Hryhorii Balytsky, commander of the Stalin Detachment, described attending breakfasts with the chief, Oleksii Fedorov. The entry for 29 June 1943 reads: “The breakfast was exceptionally wonderful. There were spirits, an appetizer, grilled mushrooms, boiled eggs, milk porridge, but one must not forget the dish of grilled, fresh fish.”30 In his journal Mikhail Naumov cursed his luck that his commissar, Kishchinsky, was an idler: “He never thinks about anything, everything is fine, he has a good appetite and drinks a lot. At the same time, he is as healthy as an ox.”31 In contrast, the clothing and footwear situation in the detachments was quite difficult from the beginning of the war to its very conclusion, despite the fact that the UShPD periodically sent limited quantities of uniforms, underwear, and even outerwear behind the front line. This fact indirectly reveals a certain feeling of compassion that the partisans showed when they carried out requisitions among the civilian population. Even in Western Ukraine not all large units constantly confiscated clothing and footwear from civilians. The reports of the Banderites and the Polish underground in 1943–44 bristle with statements about the extremely slovenly appearance of the partisans, which stemmed not only from the general level of everyday culture and poverty in the USSR—it was also the result of the operational situation. A distinctive example is cited in a report written by Stepan Oleksenko, chief of the Kamianets-Podilsky Staff of the Partisan Movement: in the summertime half of the partisan went barefoot and wove bast sandals. “Half, if not more, of us were without underwear … In connection with this, lice were our constant companions.”32 The partisans acquired some of their food in the form of trophies captured during attacks on German garrisons and economic institutions (particularly government estates), and some in the form of requisitions from the population. This depended on the commander, the personnel, and the tasks of the detachment. For example, Vasyl Yermolenko, a former member of the Vinnytsia unit, said that even during raids Yakiv Melnyk’s partisans obtained the majority of their food “from the countryside.”33

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184  •  Stalin’s Commandos According to Mikhail Naumov, the Volyn-based Lenin unit, with whose commander Naumov was at loggerheads, obtained its food and clothing in Polissian villages: Major [Leonid] Ivanov is Saburov’s loyal offspring. It is generally incomprehensible … for what purpose his large unit exists. At one time he took 200 wonderful fighters from the Khinel forests [Russia] from me, and since then they have turned into an army of marauders who live exclusively at the expense of the population [living] 200 km away from the Germans.34

The commanders of a number of other large Ukrainian units—Ivan Shitov, Oleksii Fedorov, Andrii Hrabchak, and Stepan Malikov—were also criticized by Naumov because of their refusal to leave the confines of forests as well as their subsistence at the expense of the population.35 Vasyl Behma’s unit was also noted for its slackness, and Aleksandr Saburov’s unit, too, concentrated its attention in 1943–44 on sabotage operations (with a disdain for combat operations). The combat activities of large partisan detachments of the NKVD–NKGB and army intelligence were weak, and it is obvious that they too lived above all at the expense of the civilian population. Only a minority of detachments fed themselves at the Germans’ expense. For example, the Chekist Yakov Korotkov, even in a very critical memorandum about the Sumy unit, admitted the following: “The question of the provisioning of foodstuffs and forage is being decided, as it should be, thanks to the enemy’s warehouses.”36 The history of the large Ukrainian cavalry partisan unit, which carried out three outstanding raids, including one unprecedented raiding operation called “Steppes,” leads one to suppose that Mikhail Naumov’s subordinates fed themselves at the Germans’ expense. In order to illustrate the methods that were used to supply partisan detachments with food and clothing, a fragment from an account by Robert Satanowski, commander of the unit called “Jeszcze Polska nie zgine˛ła” is here cited. He stated frankly that the Banderites were distinguished by greater thrift: It is characteristic that those districts in which the Ukrainian nationalists are operating are very wealthy economically. The districts where the partisans are active are considerably poorer. What is the matter? The partisans have overeaten. The nationalists had a large territory in their hands and fed themselves ably … Therefore, these districts are much wealthier … When we arrived in Ukrainian nationalistic villages, we had

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Problematic Questions in the History of Soviet Partisan Warfare  •  185 plenty to eat; we ate well. When we arrived in partisan villages, we were hungry. No matter how many operations were carried out in nationalistic villages, they remained wealthy villages.37

The superficiality of the requisition system had a negative impact on the effectiveness of UShPD formations: relations with the civilian population were far from serene, and in a number of cases incompetently conducted economic operations, particularly in 1941–42, led to failures and losses and, to a certain degree, contributed to the spread of banditry in the ranks of the partisans, which adversely affected discipline among fighters and commanders.

The Complicity of the Red Partisans in Provoking Nazi Terror From the very beginning of the war, all levels of the Soviet government were flooded with information coming from behind the front line indicating that the Nazis were organizing mass punishments in retaliation for acts of sabotage.38 Already by the summer of 1941 Ponomarenko confirmed in a memorandum to Stalin that such measures were producing a countereffective result: The war and the Germans’ atrocities have rallied collective farm members even more closely around the collective farms, the Soviet power, and the party. This circumstance is one of the most decisive ones in the question of routing the enemy. The peasants are feeding the troops, they are willingly giving their last [crust of bread], they themselves are bringing cattle to the troops, they led and are leading many subunits out of encirclement across the front line, risking their lives, they hide Red Army soldiers, they dress them in civilian clothing, they pass them off as their family members, regardless of the fact that the Germans pay back with cruel repressions, they burn and shoot for assistance [given] to the Red Army.39

In at least one case, the activities of the Ukrainian partisans provoked complaints, not within the context of interdepartmental struggle, but on the part of members of the competing command structure. In May 1943 an advisor of the organizational instruction department of the CC CP(B) U, one I. Mironov, familiarized himself with the activities of a number of detachments stationed between the Desna and Prypiat rivers. The total number of people who were subordinated to the “Center” group of army

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186  •  Stalin’s Commandos intelligence under the command of Major Smirnov and his deputy, Kuzma Hnidash, stood at 2,500 men: The arming of detachments is very weak … Detachments are very well provisioned with food … The main source of food provisioning for detachments is the local population … These detachments have not carried out any special operations against the Germans … Marauding, drunkenness, cavorting with women have begun to spread … in some detachments … Literally under the nose of the “Center” [GRU] and the detachments, every day and unhindered enemy steamboats traveled back and forth along the Dnipro and Prypiat.40

In sending reconnaissance information past the front line, Smirnov and Hnidash simultaneously created a semblance of an active struggle: they cleared a rather large chunk of territory of local policemen: The “Center,” having raised the population in this district and by means of elections to rural soviets and the creation of village self-defense groups, oriented the population toward passivity in the struggle against the Germans … As a result of this, during the Germans’ offensive in this district the self-defense [groups] scattered without accepting battle, and the Germans burned down villages and destroyed the population, one and all […] Thanks to the detachments’ reconnaissance data, the “Center” was aware of the concentration of Germans … However, no precautionary measures whatsoever were adopted for the detachments. Moreover, long before the Germans’ attack the detachment of C[omrade] Taranushchenko killed a German major, in whose possession were discovered a number of documents and a map, in which the exact location of partisan detachments was indicated … On the map villages subject to destruction were outlined with a red pencil … In addition, an interpreter was captured, who under interrogation provided information about the attack being prepared by the Germans … And even after this no measures whatsoever were adopted … The “Center” and its leaders endangered the population.41

Kuzma Hnidash was awarded the title of Hero of the Soviet Union on 24 March 1945. The partisan commanders of the other institution, the UShPD, also clearly realized that the Germans were killing civilians because of their activities. In December 1943 Mikhail Naumov, Hero of the Soviet Union, recorded an entry in his journal, forthrightly describing the apocalyptic picture:

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Problematic Questions in the History of Soviet Partisan Warfare  •  187 The ruins of familiar villages that were still flourishing in July are stark and covered with the first hoar-frost … Within a short period of time these people made us 300 saddles and gave away their last hopsacks for sweat-cloths … Shortly after our departure the Hitlerites burned down all the villages … No, the zone of devastation will not frighten the sons of these dead villages; the column marches cheerfully ahead with the iron desire to attain victory no matter what.42

The following table of villages in Ukraine that were burned down by the occupiers43 is compiled on the basis of a book that was written in the Soviet era: the data are incomplete. However, the overall picture is still important, as well as the regional features of the destruction of the villages. Table 3. Villages of Ukraine Burned by the Occupants and Civilians Killed—1 Name of oblast Chernihiv Zhytomyr Rivne Sumy Volyn Kyiv Ternopil Khmelnytsky Cherkasy Poltava Vinnytsia Dnipropetrovsk Lviv Total

Number of villages burned 41 112 16 64 18 17 7 28 8 6 14 3 1 335

Number of residents killed 19,110 6,901 5,729 4,422 4,033 3,172 1,517 1,297 1,296 886 715 130 56 49,294

It is noticeable that no village was destroyed either in Odesa or Chernivtsi oblasts, which were under Romanian control, or in Transcarpathia, which was then part of Hungary. It is clear that the Ukrainian oblasts that suffered the most at the hands of the Germans were the northern, forested regions—the lands where the red partisans were the most active. The classification by year throws the destruction of these villages into sharper relief.44

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188  •  Stalin’s Commandos Table 4. Villages of Ukraine Burned by the Occupants and Civilians Killed—2 1941 1942 1943 1944 Number of burned villages 8 87 198 42 Percentage of total 2 26 60 12 Civilians killed 935 10,277 35,006 3,046 Percentage of total 2 21 71 6

Total 335 100 49,294 100

The rise in the number of burned villages and killed peasants in line with the increase in the number of red partisans between 1941 and 1943 is manifestly evident, as is the decrease of German repressions in 1944, when the majority of Soviet Ukrainian territory was already occupied by the Red Army. The fact that Nazi occupiers burning villages was advantageous to the Soviet side, whose actions reflected cold calculation, is confirmed by internal documents of the organs responsible for the administration of Soviet formations. At a meeting attended by the head of the TsShPD and a number of partisan commanders on 30 August 1942, Ivan Dymnikov, one of the creators of the Diatkovsky partisan brigade operating in the Russian regions of Orel and Briansk, disclosed the results of resistance waged in Diatkovsky raion alone: Up to 5,000 people have been shot, hanged, deported to Germany. Up to 1,000 people are hiding in the forests. I think that it is essential to mount an insurrection in the enemy’s rear, especially during the period of the Red Army’s approach. This will paralyze the enemy, cause damage, and contribute to the Red Army’s more successful advance. It is necessary to state that we suffered some losses of weapons and lost several dozen people. But we did not leave a single inhabited locality without striking at the enemy.45

Those present at the meeting were perfectly aware of what the Germans were doing with “bandit” villages, even if the occupiers did not suffer any special losses as a result of shots fired from these villages. At this same meeting, which Ponomarenko joined on 31 August 1942, Kovpak announced that during his unit’s first raid into Ukraine agitators were assigned the task of “conducting agitation among the population in order to incite it to rebellion.” Here he cited an example of this type of “propaganda”: “I will recount the battles in the Novoslobidka forests. After the enemy burned down villages and destroyed 586 people—shot,

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Problematic Questions in the History of Soviet Partisan Warfare  •  189 tortured, etc.—the peasants and remaining women and children dragged water to the fighters during the battle. I want to emphasize that no terror whatsoever, no tortures whatsoever are stopping the population from rendering assistance to the Red Army.” This “positive sample” of agitation was met with silence on the part of those present, including Ponomarenko. Furthermore, this paragraph in the stenographic report was marked in the margins by Strokach, who added the following resolution to the document: “[To the chief of the operations department of the UShPD] C[omrade] Pohrebenko. Familiarize the dep[uties] of the c[hief] of the h[eadquarters] and he[ads] of departments; include [them] in the work. 24.10.42.”46 During the meeting at the Central Staff of the Partisan Movement Kovpak developed his idea about “agitation,” adding that during the second raid “the population welcomed us … there was no point for even the most inveterate marauder to do this [loot—A.G.] because he was bombarded by bread, milk. You want to eat borshch, go eat some; you want to eat soup, eat soup.” One month after this meeting the chief of the TsShPD’s operations department, Sivkov, had a conversation with Captain Seregin, chief of staff of the Mstitel (“Avenger”) Belarusian partisan detachment, and a number of other commanders. Seregin declared: Knowing that the partisans cannot be caught, the Germans in this region, where [train] wrecks took place, are gathering the local population and shooting … SIVKOV: How is the population reacting to these shootings? SEREGIN: The population is mainly on the side of the partisans. If they have shot 20–30 people in a village, this excites animosity toward the Germans.47

This fragment in the text, along with a number of others, is underlined carefully, and the following notation is inscribed on the document: “To C[omrade] [illegible name, possible “Glebov”]. P[anteleimon] P[onomarenko].” Several months later the head of the TsShPD proposed to the highest level of the political leadership of the USSR that Nazi terror should be incited against the Poles as well: “It is crucial to unleash a partisan struggle in Poland. In addition to a military effect, this will give rise to the Polish population’s just expenses for the general matter of a struggle against the German occupiers and will lead to the circumstance that the Poles [the AK and ultra-right-wing Polish National Armed Forces (NSZ) were probably meant here—A.G.] will not fully succeed in preserving their forces.”48 The strategy and tactics of the combined forces of the Central and Ukrainian

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190  •  Stalin’s Commandos staffs of the partisan movement in Poland in 1943 provides grounds for asserting that Ponomarenko’s proposals, on the whole, were accepted. Petro Vershyhora’s testimony indicates that Kovpak’s subordinates continued to implement the latter’s directives, cited above, particularly during the Carpathian raid of 1943: I have already told my boys that our biggest victory will be the moment when the Germans burn even one Galician village. I also tried this way: I burned bridges in the middle of a village, conducted agitation [saying] that the Germans are going to them only for [food] quotas and that is why we are burning bridges. They helped us deliver straw to bridges, they dumped it, but they refused to set them on fire; they said, we will show you how, but you do the burning yourselves. In a word, the people are crafty.49

Even after the occupation ended, partisan commanders were not embarrassed to entertain such ideas. Anatolii Yantselevych, the commander of one of the sabotage detachments belonging to the large Chapaev unit, which were operating in the Kyiv region, recounted the following to an associate of the CC CP(B)U’s Propaganda Department: We decided to carry out an operation in Khodoriv. It was crucial for us to disrupt communications there, destroy storehouses of grain and food, without considering that the population might be shot by the Germans … This village is located in an area of country places, the population there engaged in speculation, it collaborated actively with the Germans; we did not take them into account. We decided that even if part of the innocent population suffers, then for the most part [the population] was helping the Germans; there were many kulaks, non-laboring elements there.50

The attack on Khodoriv took place during the night of 6–7 June 1943. A similar attitude to civilian victims is also revealed in the exchange of correspondence between Soviet apparatchiks on the oblast level. Describing the exploits of his colleague and Hero of the Soviet Union Viktor Liagin (codenamed “Kornev”), the head of the NKGB Directorate in Mykolaiv oblast, A. Martynov, emphasized the steadfastness of the head of the Mykolaiv residentura during an investigation by the SD: During one of the interrogations the Germans flung an accusation against Kornev that ten Soviet citizens, residents of the city of Mykolaiv, whom the Germans had executed as hostages for an act of sabotage that was carried out at a military airfield, perished supposedly through his fault.

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Problematic Questions in the History of Soviet Partisan Warfare  •  191 In response to this, Kornev declared: “If the executed Soviet citizens had known that the destroyed German planes were designated for the devastation of Soviet cities and the extermination of the civilian population, then these ten hostages would not have begrudged their lives for the destruction of the German airplanes.”51

The veracity of the above-cited conversation between Kornev and the German criminal investigation is a matter of the Chekists’ conscience. What is important is that the saboteur’s logic earned approbation. Furthermore, this motivation was occasionally not even hidden from the eventual victims of forthcoming Nazi reprisals. According to Fylyp Klopotovsky, commissar of the Dymer Detachment of the Kyiv unit named after Khrushchev, he and his colleagues, initially introducing themselves as Germans at a meeting of village residents, suddenly killed a policeman. To the cries of the people, “Oh, oh, what are you doing? Tomorrow they will shoot us all!” Klopotovsky knew how to respond: “That’s very good. The more of you who are killed, the sooner you will grasp that it is necessary to join the partisans.”52 Perfectly aware of the Nazis’ methods in their struggle against their enemies, the command centers never urged the partisans to scale back—or even to make slight adjustments to—their combat and sabotage activities so as not to draw the Nazis’ wrath once more upon the civilian population. Orders concerning acts of sabotage and terrorism in cities were even issued by Stalin;53 however, in official Soviet propaganda these operations were deliberately suppressed.54 For example, as early as November 1941, the “great leader” personally deleted from the draft version of a Pravda article about the pogrom in Odesa all mentions of the circumstances leading up to that massacre: the detonation of a Soviet radio-controlled bomb that killed dozens of Romanian officers.55 Moreover, the partisans never received even the slightest suggestion that they should blow up trains and destroy police positions farther away from densely populated civilian areas. It cannot be excluded that the provocation of Nazi terror was generally the chief task of Soviet sabotage, combat, and terrorist formations. The number of killed occupiers, collaborators, and destroyed or damaged installations is far lower than the number of civilians and amount of material wealth destroyed by the Nazis during the course of “anti-partisan” reprisal operations. Information about these atrocities was disseminated by the Soviet propaganda machine on Nazi-occupied territory, in the Soviet rear, and also outside the borders of the Soviet Union. All this alienated both Soviet citizens and the international public from the Nazis.

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6 Disciplinary Infractions in Partisan Detachments Discipline, or rather the lack of it, affected the operations carried out by partisan detachments, and the continued existence of partisan formations depended directly on the self-control of the fighters grouped in special subunits. Maintaining relations with the population was more important for the partisans than for regular army units; furthermore, Soviet civilians viewed the partisans as the Red Army’s advance guard and as the representatives of the political force that governed them. In order to throw this situation into greater relief, this chapter will not focus on general questions of discipline, but on disciplinary infractions, which gave rise to grievous complaints from civilians, and the partisans’ superiors as well.

Banditry From the standpoint of the German occupiers and the civilian population, all the requisitions carried out by the partisans were manifestations of banditry. At first glance, it is difficult to use any other word to describe the following phenomenon: the arrival of armed men who hint at the possibility of some unpleasantness or simply orchestrate some nastiness; they then steal valuables and go into hiding. But highly colored and emotional accounts provided by victims or eyewitnesses do not relieve us of the obligation to use the partisans’ internal assessments of their own actions. Not all forcible expropriation is robbery. The phrase “partisan banditry” is understood to mean an attack carried out for personal rather than collective military-political goals, for the purpose of stealing someone’s belongings with the application of violence or threats. The collective goals, on the other hand, pertained to the struggle against those who were regarded as the enemy by the political leaderships of the Ukrainian partisans or the Ukrainian insurgents: the CC CP(B)U or the central leadership of the OUN(B).

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Disciplinary Infractions in Partisan Detachments  •  193 An economic operation is understood to mean the confiscation from the population of items indispensable for life in the forest and the struggle against the German occupiers. The requisition of “luxury items,” however, is banditry. For example, partisans demanding carts, pigs, potatoes, and winter sheepskins can be fully explained by operational necessity. But the theft of watches, bracelets, fine boots and colorful scarves, moonshine, and gramophones can be called nothing other than robbery. An economic operation was conducted openly, on the orders of a partisan commander and with the passive approval of the Center, while robbery was carried out by fighters arbitrarily, secretly, and, in some cases, by a group of people through prior agreement. The execution of economic operations was accompanied by a specific order about how to deal with the confiscated material valuables. Of course, there were also borderline occurrences, which are not easy to characterize. Mark Meshok, a veteran of the “For Victory!” Detachment, commanded by Opanas Masterenko (of Malikov’s Zhytomyr unit), recalled an action won by the partisans, when he was 12 years old. Later, the order was given to finish off the prisoners … I had two Schmeissers, about a dozen small knives … An order was given to collect gold articles … There wasn’t a single German soldier who wasn’t wearing a gold ring on his hand. Many had gold teeth … So we were going around, finishing off the wounded and removing the gold—if rings didn’t come off, we’d cut off the fingers, toss them in a bucket, and throw them in a heap … A tremendous pile of gold was collected after this action.1

Although here we are literally talking about looting, the valuables were gathered for collective purposes, though it is not entirely clear how Strokach would have reacted if he had learned of this method of collecting loot. Rather than looking at these borderline cases, this chapter will instead focus on straightforward banditry—which was regarded as a crime by both the local population and the occupiers—and above all, the leadership of the partisans. As early as 31 August 1942, at the time of a meeting attended by Ponomarenko, Kovpak admitted, in a moment of self-criticism, that at the very beginning of the partisan struggle cases of looting (marauding) were observed in his detachment.2 However, according to this experienced commander, following the completion of “appropriate work” and a change in the mood of the population in favor of the partisans, this phenomenon disappeared. But Sydir Kovpak was lying.

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194  •  Stalin’s Commandos Information about banditry in Soviet formations began arriving at the UShPD in early 1943, mostly from Strokach’s secret agents—radio relay center operators. For example, on 3 March 1943 “Carmen” radioed from the Sumy unit that many detachments were engaging in marauding: “They are taking anything they can get their hands on, to the extent that they are taking blankets, sheets, underwear that they need or don’t need. The command is not adopting measures.”3 One and a half months later the conduct of Kovpak’s men had not changed: “Within a brief period of time many partisans have been killed while acquiring trophies for themselves for personal gain.”4 Two weeks after this wireless message, Minaev, former political instructor of one of the detachments of the Sumy unit, provided a comprehensive description of this phenomenon. The subunits which were plundering the most were those that were least likely to receive a reprimand from their commanders: Blame must not be placed on the 3rd Company because it is the best combat company in the detachment; it is difficult to accuse the intelligence service because the intelligence service frequently operates independently of the main forces, and one cannot accuse the battery either because the battery is the main subunit and the most lethal weapon in the detachment … but there are more violations of orders than in other subunits.5

For the purposes of illustration, Minaev cited the confiscation of pigs and felt boots from residents (people were left standing on the street in foot bindings), the extortion of watches, the destruction of beehives, as well as the seizure of skirts and dresses from local Germans (Volksdeutscher). In his journal the commander of the Stalin Detachment, a kind of “model” detachment in Oleksii Fedorov’s unit, Hryhorii Balytsky, Hero of the Soviet Union, constantly recorded entries about the Stalinites’ economic “devilry.” For example, in September 1942 on the territory of Belarus a partisan named Khomenko, who was hiding in ambush, “abandoned his post and dropped in on a [female] Red Army soldier, from whom he took a sweater, a top shirt, and underwear.”6 On 19 April 1943, during a raid into the west, “some fighters from the Voroshilov and Shchors detachments,” passing through the settlement of Krasnoselianka, “without permission from their commanders ran from house to house collecting eggs, potatoes, and some even threatened the peasants that if they did not give something, they would be shot, et cetera; curses flew … The peasants, trembling before them, gave them everything they demanded.”7 Looting also continued in Western Ukraine; for example, fighters in the first platoon

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Disciplinary Infractions in Partisan Detachments  •  195 of the 1st Company engaged in banditry on the orders of the detachment commander and the political instructor: they confiscated sheep, pigs, flour, and salt from the peasants.8 There was nothing surprising about the conduct of Fedorov’s fighters, inasmuch as their leader himself also engaged in indiscriminate looting (barakhol′stvo). After the operation to rout the police force from the town of Volodymyrets, Rivne oblast in June 1943, Fedorov reprimanded Balytsky for acts of brigandry being committed by his partisans. Balytsky, offended, recorded in his journal that the “facts took place,” but they were hypocritical and exaggerated unjustifiably: Com[rade] Fedorov’s aide and orderly took things anywhere, for Uliana Petrovna [Makohon, Fedorov’s mistress—A.G.]; in addition, Com[rade] Druzhinin’s aide also traveled especially in order to get something for the commissars … “In someone else’s eye you see a mote, but in our own you do not even notice a log.” It is a fact that entire suitcases of things [were taken] before my very eyes.9

Facts have already been mentioned indicating that Aleksandr Saburov’s large unit was distinguished by a high level of brigandry even in comparison with earlier-mentioned partisans;10 this question was broached in particular by Lavrentii Beria, who sent a note to Stalin and Ponomarenko on 25 January 1943: “The NKVD USSR communicates the following dispatch received from its associate … in the vicinity of Rivne, Ukrainian SSR: ‘The 7th Battalion of Saburov’s detachments have arrived. The partisans of this battalion are engaging in unprecedented robberies, banditry, and drunkenness; they are traveling throughout villages in the uniforms of German soldiers. They shoot residents who are fleeing into the woods.’”11 After receiving masses of such information about the “daring” activities of Saburov and his men, Tymofii Strokach made the following delicate comment in a report written in the summer of 1943: “The commissar of this large unit, Com[rade] Bohatyr, is rather bad, and the political-educational work set up by him in the large unit significantly lags behind the unit’s combat actions.”12 In the same report Strokach noted that the distinctive feature of the commander was “his outstanding organizational skills … Saburov’s large unit is a leading one in the sphere of the organization and growth of partisan detachments.”13 Both Saburov and Bohatyr retained their posts to the end of the occupation. For the sake of objectivity, the above description of the banditry that took place in three regular, “model” large units of the UShPD must be followed by at least a handful of other examples.

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196  •  Stalin’s Commandos On 15 February 1943 a wireless message sent to the UShPD from a detachment based in Sumy oblast and commanded by P. Lohvyn reported that a shootout took place among the fighters of the detachment during a robbery: “Yesterday drunken men broke into a peasant’s house, they issued the command: ‘Lie down.’ Everyone lay down, and they took the last sack of grain and began to leave, but Sen, a scout from the detachment, shot one of them with a submachine gun; it was the com[mander] of the detachment.”14 According to Ivan Shary, a resident of Reymentarivka village in the Koriukivka raion of the Chernihiv oblast, and a partisan of the local detachment led by Borys Tunik, Oleksandr Livinenko took a shirt of Shary’s that the latter had inherited from his grandfather: “And after the war, I came [back from the Red Army] and took back the shirt and poured sour cream over his lath fence. He later apologized.”15 According to Naumov’s journal, the population of Zhytomyr oblast suffered greatly at the hands of the large units commanded by several commanders, including Andrii Hrabchak. The “kings of the Belarus forests” Saburov, Malikov, Shitov, and their ilk spawned an immense number of such independently operating groups under the epithet “on special assignment in these parts.” … I was amazed at the scope of robbery inflicted by local partisans in Emilchino. I occupied the residence of the priest, Father Nikolay, for my apartment. There was total chaos in this rather large residence, as all of his things had been taken away, furniture had been overturned, some of the dishes had been broken, and the apartment was not heated. His horses had been taken, and the gr[oup] c[ommander] of the Dzerzhinsky p[artisan] d[etachment] had demanded 30,000 roubles in Soviet currency to aid the Red Army. I went by a number of adjacent apartments, where I observed the same thing. There were no longer any residents in most homes; they had fled to escape the lawlessness.16

The partisans demanded transportable items from the population, including those intended for their mistresses; they beat elderly men with ramrods and threatened to shoot people. However, even Naumov’s large unit was no stranger to manifestations of banditry.17 A female resident of the village of Stara Rafalivka, located in Rivne oblast, recalled that the robberies committed by the partisans of a GRU brigade led by Anton Brynsky took place under threat of execution: If you don’t give something to the partisans, you part with your life. They took pants … from old man Lazar. He said: “I won’t give [them

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Disciplinary Infractions in Partisan Detachments  •  197 up], they’re for when I die!” Some criminal fired off a shot: “Here’s for your death, grandpa.” I had re-sewn a coat belonging to my late mother. They came. “Give it to us!” they say. I beg: “It’s the only one I have, my last clothing!” But it was pointless to beg.18

Fedorov’s official complaint gives us a high level of confidence in the veracity of these recollections about members of army intelligence. According to the command of the Chernihiv-Volyn unit, a number of the brigade’s commanders terrorized the local population “with universal beatings and looting carried out, as a rule, in the form of banditry, robbery.”19 Even Brynsky, who tried to make excuses to his departmental superiors, admitted: “The stated facts did take place.”20 If their superiors connived at this banditry, rank-and-file partisans gave part of their loot to them. For example, according to Strokach’s secret informants, in early March 1944 the ranks of the Volyn Lenin unit led a rather peaceful life: Party work in detachments is deficient, marauding and drinking bouts are continuing. [Plenipotentiary representative of the CC CP(B)U for Stanyslaviv oblast M.] Kozenko has surrounded himself with people who reckon the war is over and are awaiting the liberation of Stanyslaviv oblast and their recall to leading posts. [Commander of the large unit L.] Ivanov and the rest of the command boozed for half a month; there were cases of fights. Those found guilty of crimes frequently find protection from deputy [of the Supreme Soviet of the Ukrainian SSR M. Kozenko], paying him off with moonshine and odds and ends.21

Soviet historiography constantly stressed that a struggle was waged against this phenomenon, but not a single member of the partisan leadership based behind the front or commander of a detachment or large unit even tried to offer an intelligible response concerning ways to suppress partisan banditry. After receiving information on acts of banditry in which his subordinated large units were engaging, Strokach sent wireless messages to their commanders, ordering them to put a stop to looting.22 Usually, the methods of punishment meted out to those found guilty of banditry were not clearly stipulated; there was only vague talk of the need to adopt the “severest measures.” Concrete directives were finally issued at a meeting held in late May 1943 and attended by members of the CC CP(B)U, the UShPD, and commanders of the largest partisan detachments: “Put a stop to manifestations of all

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198  •  Stalin’s Commandos types of looting and gross violence against civilians, making the guilty parties answerable, all the way to execution by shooting.”23 That is to say, the death penalty was recommended as an exceptional, extreme measure; at the same time, this directive was accepted for implementation only on the verbal level. On 3 April 1943 Hryhorii Balytsky issued a verbal warning to the looters under his command. On 17 April he wrote that “it came down to smashing the faces of [active marauders] and arresting them.” Evidently, this measure failed to produce an effect, because the following day several more partisans were caught engaging in banditry: “Brawls broke out, from my blow partisans (marauders) flew out of houses, like flies.” On 3 July 1943, after Balytsky discovered that his men were looting once again, he disarmed them and issued a verbal reprimand to commanders and political instructors of companies.24 The banditry continued nonetheless. Another revealing incident took place in the Sumy regiment during the Carpathian raid. Two partisans from the artillery battery, Semen Chibisov and Vasilii Alekseev, stole a pail of rendered fat, a pail of honey, clothing, footwear, and other articles from a civilian’s home in the village of Shladava. On 2 July 1943 an order to shoot these two partisans was read out before the members of the unit; this document was published in John Armstrong’s outstanding compilation of articles on the partisan war.25 Furthermore, an entry in Semen Rudnev’s journal, in which he regretted the shooting of two “workers, combat comrades,”26 was reproduced in Ukraine in a multitude of publications. It is not known what punishment the two partisans actually experienced that day: they were spared and not executed.27 Partisans were not shot “simply” for committing acts of banditry, for example if the guilty party was an ordinary partisan and not a deserter from the police; in the latter case, special control over such individuals was established. The death penalty “for our people” was instituted as an exception. It applied above all to turncoats who had abandoned the ranks of the partisans, deserters, and enemy agents, either exposed or suspected. Most likely, conflicts of a personal nature that smoldered within partisan formations were resolved in a number of cases through execution by shooting— occasionally under the pretext of a struggle against marauding. In addition, the death penalty was meted out to those found guilty of insubordination, or the charge of brigandry was added to other disciplinary infractions, leading to execution; for example, rape committed in friendly districts.28 However, in view of the importance of drawing Poles into Soviet detachments, the Ukrainian partisans did not engage in banditry among the Polish population of Western Ukraine or Poland.29 When Strokach felt like it, he could put a stop to brigandry among rank-and-file partisans.

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Disciplinary Infractions in Partisan Detachments  •  199

Drunkenness The increased sale of alcohol, on which the government had a monopoly, became one of the sources for financing the creation of the gigantic militaryindustrial complex in the 1920s to 1930s. During the Soviet–German war the scale on which alcohol was issued to the Red Army was larger than that supplied to other armies in the same period,30 and the partisans were not overlooked in this respect. For example, a resolution passed by the Soviet government on 15 December 1942 mandated that the UShPD be allotted 250 liters of vodka in December 1942, in addition to other consumer products, with an additional 759 liters in the first quarter of 1943.31 The internal documents of partisan detachments cast doubt on the following conclusion by Earl Ziemke: “Drunkenness among both the officers and men is frequently mentioned, but generally the scarcity of alcohol seems to have served to keep that problem under control.”32 It is no exaggeration to say that, after recovering from the shock of the German invasion, Oleksii Fedorov’s detachment set about drinking alcohol with a passion. The entries in Mykola Popudrenko’s journal record incidents of excessive drinking, when large quantities of alcohol were gotten hold of, as on 31 January 1942: “Today everyone was drunk.”33 It isn’t easy to summon up the image of 500 drunken, armed men who have been transformed by their forest life. Saburov’s detachment was renowned for its carousing. During the Stalin raid Leonid Ivanov, commander of one of the battalions in this large unit, recorded an entry in his journal describing how the police were routed in the village of Sobych, in the northern part of Sumy oblast, and storehouses of grain, a tractor, and threshing machines were burned: “The terrified people locked themselves in their houses. The boys got hold of some spirits and they are walking around drunk and smiling: ‘Well, we vexed [them], they’ll remember for a century!’”34 Mentions of alcohol use are encountered regularly in this source.35 During the first 18 months of the war, when communication was poor, the Center did not demonstrate any concern whatsoever over the partisans’ use of alcohol. This led Ivan Syromolotny, a representative of the CC CP(B)U, to express himself openly in a letter sent to Strokach on 11 January 1943 from Kovpak’s detachment: “Often it is difficult to believe that we live in the rear. It’s bad [that] there’s no vodka. Alcohol is not distilled here. There is little moonshine and it is bad, but we drink it all the same, wherever we can get it.”36 In early February 1943 the female agent codenamed “Carmen” reported the following to the UShPD: “The entire command often engages in drinking. Everyone fears Koval

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200  •  Stalin’s Commandos [Kovpak’s nickname—A.G.] like the plague, because when he drinks he is capable of whipping anyone with a lash.”37 After receiving the latest wireless message informing him that the officers of the large Sumy unit were spending their leisure time drinking alcohol and playing cards, Strokach sent an express wireless message to Kovpak and Rudnev, misleading them as to his personal sources of information: “Once again I was summoned [to] the CC AUCP(B), notified [about] the existence of marauding and drunkenness [in] your detachments. Please adopt decisive measures of struggle [against] these disgraceful phenomena.”38 Similar wireless messages were circulated to other large units, from where information about the partisans’ drunkenness was being sent; such information was arriving from everywhere.39 On 4 April 1943 an informer sent the following information from Yakiv Melnyk’s unit, which had been deployed to the right bank of the Dnipro River: “Once again I am reporting that looting and drinking bouts are taking place in Melnyk’s detachment. Degradation of discipline and desertion. For the 4 April operations people were busy drinking.”40 It is possible that the veteran of partisan warfare, Vasyl Yermolenko, remembered the same incident: “We raided the factory, took some things; the people were like mice.”41 Afterwards, all 400 partisans drank industrial alcohol. In Bovkun’s unit, said Ayzen, “we celebrated Soviet holidays very well,” and gave the example of when an alcohol plant had been captured near Chernihiv: “We took several barrels of alcohol.”42 On 23 March 1943, a radiogram was sent to the UShPD from Aleksandr Saburov’s unit, which was deployed in the Prypiat River basin. The message reinforced the negative image of this formation in the eyes of those higher up the organization: “Platoon commander Borodinsky is drunk and disorderly. While intoxicated, he intimidates local residents with his weapon.”43 Chekist Yakov Korotkov, who had been rejected by Kovpak, was sent by the UShPD to the Poltava unit as deputy commander for intelligence. According to this detachment’s commissar, Mitrofan Negreev, Korotkov found common ground with Mykhailo Salai, the unit’s commander, in his taste for moonshine: “Comrade Korotkov turned out to be a classic alcoholic. In place of intelligence work, his agents searched for, destroyed, and delivered moonshine via special agents and, in particular, his deputy, comrade Mangeim. Thus, intelligence work remained a second priority, which is to say that hardly anyone ever did any.”44 German intelligence reported that the commander of the 1st Moldavian large partisan unit operating in the Zhytomyr area, Vasilii Andreev, used alcohol as a special incentive for the partisans: “Andreev gives wine, which

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Disciplinary Infractions in Partisan Detachments  •  201 Moscow also provides to him, to his bandits who exhibit greater courage. Wine is only given out to those taking part in diversionary missions, and only when they are departing. … Everybody agreed to go on a mission in exchange for a half litre of wine. But Andreev does not let everyone go, and established queues.”45 The UShPD sent wine to partisan detachments from time to time in gift packages, so it is quite possible a basis exists to support German intelligence reports. From the territory of Polissia oblast in the Belarusian SSR it was reported that I. Pasiucha, the “commissar of [V.] Chepyha’s [separate] detachment, is doing nothing and is shooting fighters in a drunken state.”46 Pasiucha was replaced by I. Semenyshyn, who also became known for his predilection for the “green serpent,” a euphemism for alcohol addiction. In the Volyn-based Lenin unit the members of the command drank heavily during the first half of January 1944.47 After taking a ten-day pause following Strokach’s protests, they resumed drinking with their men: “In anticipation of [delivered] goods, general drinking bouts, degradation began all over again.”48 The UShPD’s criticism generally influenced the situation in large units to some degree, but there was no fundamental impact. For example, Strokach’s first wireless message to Kovpak about the inadmissibility of drunkenness was sent in February 1943. However, as attested by the Chekist Yakov Korotkov, who spent time in the Sumy unit, even in March Pavlovsky, Kovpak’s deputy for economic issues, “is never sober; moonshine for the command is prepared under his supervision in the ec[onomic] section.”49 According to statements provided by Minaev, former political instructor of the 5th Group of the Sumy unit, as a result of the UShPD’s criticism, the extent of the drinking decreased but was not fully liquidated […] One can cite a number of facts pertaining to the question of drinking … At present Kovpak’s wounded partisans in Moscow are drinking heavily and debauching, but they have been stopped in good time. Commissar C[omrade] Rudnev has begun to stamp out drunkenness by physical force, that is, many a time the commander and the political instructor of the 10th Company and oth[er] comrades, who had been drinking, caught hell, and when Commander C[omrade] Kovpak flicks the lash two or three times, the intoxication passes.50

Hryhorii Balytsky’s journal attests that in one model unit, the Stalin Detachment of the Chernihiv-Volyn unit, drunkenness remained a widespread, everyday occurrence even after regular communications were established with the “Soviet mainland.” Moreover, even in the Soviet rear

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202  •  Stalin’s Commandos the partisans’ drinking sprees were not infrequent. After Balytsky was wounded, he was sent for treatment to Moscow, where the unit’s commander and commissar had also ended up. They organized real debaucheries in the capital: I began living with [Oleksii] Fedorov, [Vladimir] Druzhinin, [the Komsomol assistant of the unit commander Maria] Kovalenko, [commissar of the Stalin Detachment] Pratsun in the Hotel Moscow, no. 859. Practically the entire hotel knew about this room. Life was exceptionally merry: we drank, caroused; that’s how the days and nights passed. We drank enough alcohol and 40-proof vodka to power a water-mill.51

To mark “International Women’s Day” a “drinking bout, a party” was organized after the return to the German rear on 8 March 1943. Oleksii Fedorov’s birthday was celebrated on 30 March 1943 with a drinking spree that took place in Yakiv Melnyk’s Vinnytsia unit. The Ukrainian writer Mykola Sheremet was one of the guests: “There was a pail of moonshine and several liters of 96-proof spirits.” On 9 April a drinking spree was organized for no special reason: “Three of us Heroes [of the Soviet Union]—Fedorov, Kolpak, and I—left for [Mikhail Naumov’s] unit. With our retinues. Ah! We partied hard; there was a lot of moonshine.” The May 1st festivities lasted two days: “This morning and yesterday Fedorov was invited for breakfast and lunch. There was moonshine as well as excellent appetizers. Com[rade] Fedorov danced non-stop. In the evening various dances and games were organized. All this is great, but what is bad is that for several dozen days we are not waging battle against the enemy.” Fedorov’s breakfasts, which featured moonshine and normal alcohol, continued on a regular basis. In late May Balytsky and a group of partisans were once again sent on a business trip to Moscow, from where he was supposed to return on 5 June. His return flight was delayed by bad weather, so the partisans decided not to waste any time: “That night we had to have a good time; we obtained 20 liters of vodka and 20 lit[ers] of spirits. We partied hard, partisan-style.”52 In the fall of 1943 Balytsky constantly described joint drinking bouts arranged by him and his leader together with the commanders of detachments of the NKGB USSR operating nearby: Viktor Karasev (Olimp), Mykola Prokopiuk (Okhotniki), and especially Dmitrii Medvedev (Pobediteli), who in 1938–39 had served as the “commander” of prisoners in two forced labor camps in the Gulag, Medvezhegorsk and Norilsk.53 An entry in Balytsky’s journal states: “15 October 1943 … Com[rade]

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Disciplinary Infractions in Partisan Detachments  •  203 Medvedev arrived with his retinue … We drank hard practically the entire day in connection with Com[rade] Medvedev’s arrival. The vodka was his. I have none, and I never have it.”54 Balytsky’s next entry indicates one of the sources of the Pobediteli Detachment’s permanent state of merriment: “22 October 1943 … At 9:00 Com[rade] Medvedev arrived with his detachment … We drank practically the entire day. Medvedev has tons of moonshine; he has his own equipment.”55 A week later Balytsky visited the quarters of his “fun-loving” Chekist neighbor, where he noted one of the reasons behind the Pobediteli Detachment’s drinking sprees—the idleness of the majority of the partisans: 31 October 1943. I visited Medvedev: oh, has he ever found himself a comfortable spot, may the devil take him; he seems to be prepared to live in these mud huts for no less than 5 years. That does not surprise me; he has nothing to do and therefore people have to be occupied with something. There are 800 men in his detachment, but no more than 50–60 people are engaged in intelligence work.56

A German intelligence report gave a simple characterization of the attitude to alcohol on the part of Mikhail Naumov, commander of the large Ukrainian cavalry partisan unit: “He likes to drink vodka.”57 However, Naumov’s journal indicates that drinking bouts stemmed from the standards followed by Soviet commanders. For example, on 15 December 1943 Naumov was a guest of Ivan Shitov, commander of the Ternopil unit: “The ball was first-rate. They seem to enjoy their life. They have many kinds of delicacies. People are living the good life, they think least of all, they think even less about how to complete the mission … Out of annoyance I drank so much that I surprised my commissar, whom it is generally difficult to surprise with this.”58 For Naumov the entire next week was a succession of parties, during which he acted according to the well-known principle, “I don’t want to but I will”: “23.12.43. I felt unwell on those days. Above all, I drank a lot of moonshine, my nerves became unsteady. I drank under compulsion because I don’t like to drink altogether, and for me a drinking bout is an onerous duty. I drink only with guests [partisans from nearby detachments—A.G.], and there was a fair number of them that week.”59 His journal also notes cases of drunkenness among the partisans of the Ukrainian cavalry unit, including Naumov’s intelligence deputy Havryliuk: I love him for his sober mind and hate the intoxicated [mind] (he drinks too much and yells stupid things). Yesterday evening, I had to make

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204  •  Stalin’s Commandos him leave the table after he got drunk and started to pound his fist on the table within 10 minutes after arriving from Olevsk. There are and were no other smart fellows [among the detachment commanders in Naumov’s large unit—A.G.].60

According to veteran Semen Dodyk’s memoirs, before any festivity began the following phrase was pronounced by Zabashtansky, the commander of his platoon, which was part of the Karmeliuk Detachment of the Lenin cavalry partisan brigade: “Farewell, mind; we meet tomorrow.”61 From the reports of the Ukrainian nationalist forces it is clear that the Soviet partisans were often not in their right minds. In particular, the partisans’ loyalty to the Soviet system was recorded on the territory of Galicia in February 1944: “On 20.02.44 a group of red partisans [numbering] between 600 and 800 people set up their quarters in the c[ity] of Vuzhhorodok [probably Vyshhorodok, Lanivtsi raion, Ternopil oblast—A.G.]. At the entrance to the apartments they asked first and foremost whether there were any Banderites, then they demanded vodka. They drink vodka by the glassful (to Stalin’s health).”62 The opposite was noted in a comparable report from the Volyn region, where even anti-Soviet sentiments were said to be exhibited by red partisans. It is possible that the document was an exaggeration, but considering the scale and forms of alcohol consumption shown above, it may be supposed that the partisans could, in a state of extreme intoxication, say anything at all: “In Holovna, there were cases where drunk Reds would sit at the table and yell, ‘Death to Hitler! Death to Stalin!’ They said such a war could go on for them for another 10 years (so they could continue to steal and make merry).”63 In another incident that took place in the Ternopil region in March 1944, the large unit named after the 24th anniversary of the Red Army was probably described here: “During a drinking spree 80 per cent drink vodka to the point of unconsciousness, the remaining 20 per cent—moderately … Their general conduct is worse than savage. During a drinking bout they wallow in mud, lie down to sleep outside in the straw, and [later] catch up with their detachments.”64 Drunkenness contributed to partisan banditry, a fact which was reported in an internal nationalist document of spring 1944, regarding events in the Lviv area: Entering a hut, they’d immediately ask for vodka. Vodka quieted down the bandits somewhat, and usually, a hut that served vodka would not be robbed as much; the only things taken would be those that they liked.

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Disciplinary Infractions in Partisan Detachments  •  205 They liked watches most of all, and carefully sought them out. They took everything from those who had no vodka—whatever was at hand, even things that they had no need for at all. 65

Drunkenness was conducive to the partisans’ banditry, and it also had a negative impact on the success of conducting combat activities because, among other reasons, it spoiled relations with the civilian population. For example, a Banderite report from the northern part of Rivne oblast contains the following information about the enemy: “The headquarters [of one of the groups] of the Kotovsky Detachment is located in the village of Veliuhy. There are approximately 50 men from this village in his detachment. The commander is a local man and the political instructor is a parachutist … This group is intensively robbing the population; consequently, the people hate it as [a gang of] robbers and drunkards.”66 In additions, drunkenness had a direct effect on the quality of intelligence work. A report prepared by the Ukrainian nationalist underground in late 1943 characterized the situation in the south-western districts of the Belarusian SSR: “The reds are morally corrupt, they drink, commit outrages, they beat and kill even their own secret collaborators.”67 Alcohol also had an adverse impact on the outcome of red combat actions. Raisa Sydorchuk, a resident of the burned-out village of Stara Rafalivka in north Rivne oblast, recalled how the partisans carried out their punitive military operation in a drunken state: “That’s how I remember them … on horses, drunk, always ready to ruthlessly kill ‘enemies of the people and traitors’ and to steal ‘in the name of the victory over fascism.’”68 That time, a small Banderite self-defense group was not able to repulse a numerically superior force of partisans, but it was clear that it was easier to resist a drunk opponent than a composed and attentive soldier. Strokach and Khrushchev were constantly receiving information about the failures of various operations owing to drunkenness. In particular, Yakiv Melnik, the plenipotentiary of the CP(B)U central committee, described a battle involving several detachments in north Sumy oblast: Our first operation in Marchikhina Buda on 30 October 1942 initially met with success, and we scattered a garrison of up to 100 policemen, killing some, after which we began procuring provisions in the morning. Detachment commanders were ordered to establish pickets around the village, and to allocate a part of their forces to search supplies. However, the detachment commanders had been so lax with their soldiers that they all got drunk, while the soldiers of the Chervonny Detachment (whose commander at the time was comrade Lukashev, the current second

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206  •  Stalin’s Commandos secretary of the CP(B)U oblast committee) were relieved by comrade Lukashev of their picket duty and sent by cart to Loshenka. When the Magyars went on the offensive at noon, it turned out the left flank— where the Chervonny Detachment had positioned itself—was wide open, and we were all forced to withdraw.69

Two weeks later, it was the same story: On 7 November, our detachments went out into Chervonny raion, to the villages of Pustogorod, Fotevizh, Vochevsk, and others. Returning from the operation, Kumaniok, Hnibeda, and other commanders, being intoxicated, left their detachments to their own devices and departed for Khinel. Naumov and I had to assemble groups scattered over the field, fall them into formation, and send them along the route. Arriving in Khinel, I made a comment the next day to comrade Hnibeda, quite politely, about his having abandoned his detachment and not brought them to the deployment location. Apparently, this observation was not to the liking of either Hnibeda or Kumaniok himself. And as I learned later, they discussed this issue over alcohol.70

At that moment, Kovpak’s large unit was operating in another region— the right bank of the Dnipro. According to one of Kovpak’s men, the commander of the 9th company, the holder of an order, was accidentally killed as a result of a drinking spree in March 1943. And this was not the only such case: Whenever there’s a drinking spree, the detachment suffers extra casualties in combat. An example is the action in Kodry village, in Kyiv oblast, where the 3rd company entered into combat while intoxicated, and the best people in the company were killed. There were very many cases where the scout company fired on its own scouts without asking for a password or offering a countersign, because people were drunk and thought others to be policemen. There were cases where intoxicated scouting resulted in departures from lines of march, and people got lost for days.71

Undisciplined leadership roused the censure of the rank and file. On 16 April 1943, a Strokach informant sent a radiogram to UShPD: “The Partisans speak with respect of Fedorov’s unit, and they call Saburov brave. They rail against their own commanders as braggarts, and blame the consequences of the air raid on their mismanagement. They were hitting the bottle.”72

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Disciplinary Infractions in Partisan Detachments  •  207 It must be said that Kovpak’s men were in error—the situation in Fedorov’s unit was similar. On 17 June 1943, the Chernihiv-Volyn unit was to have commenced its movement, during the next part of the raid, to a deployment position: “Over lunch, comrade Rvanov (the large unit’s chief of s[taff]) gave comrade Fedorov an order to sign, but the latter categorically refused to sign it. And this was all because comrade Fedorov was very intoxicated. The order was read at 17.00 [evidently late—A.G.]. The order had to do with our further line of march. At 20.00, we moved out …”73 Two weeks later, the large unit’s commander arranged yet another drinking spree: On 28 June 1943 … Breakfast was accompanied with vodka. The unit drank to the point of oblivion. Comrade Fedorov himself went around to the battalions with some guests to inspect some mounted and handheld machine guns, as well as automatic rifles. All of the soldiers, who didn’t know what was going on, went on alert. And it’s not surprising that they went on alert, because long bursts were fired from the mounted machine guns, which caused nothing but consternation … So many rounds were fired for no reason and to no purpose! More than 1500 rounds were fired in all from all types of weapons. This was simply a crime. It was wrong to fire off so many rounds of ammunition. If we waste so many rounds for no reason now, there will come a time when we won’t have enough ammunition at hand to destroy the fascist vipers …74

Hryhorii Balytsky scolded his subordinates for intoxication. In particular, on 9 October 1943, Platonov, commander of the diversionary company, reported to Balytsky that the mission had not been accomplished despite the loss of Lavrinenko, the commander of the diversionary platoon: It turns out that comrade Platonov, despite my repeated warnings, became intoxicated while carrying out the mission, and as a result of his drunkenness, failed in the operation. This wasn’t the first time comrade Platonov had failed in a combat assignment. During execution of the mission, not only was Platonov intoxicated, but so were his platoon commanders—Nikitin (who drank until he lost consciousness), Krishhanov, and others. The strongest measures had to be taken. Platonov was relieved of command of the 3rd company, Nikitin was given a reprimand, [as was] Dubinin, while everyone else received a warning.75

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208  •  Stalin’s Commandos In the Kotovsky Detachment of the 1st Moldavian partisan unit, drunkenness also led to the failure of an operation that had been planned by Commander Kozhuhar, who loved to drink. This was attested to by the informant Volodin, who was apparently employed by the Moldavian SSR NKVD. According to Volodin: Kozhuhar provided false information [to] Sovinformburo regarding a combat operation. Supposedly, they killed 52 Germans and a policeman. In fact, what happened was this: Kozhuhar sent 24 men on a supply operation. The group was led by Anisimov (some kind of bandit). They arrived in Bechi village, got roaring drunk, and went to sleep without even posting guards. That night, one of the men, a comrade Titovich, stepped out onto the street and saw a group of the enemy. He ran back into the house, raised the alarm, and then ran back out of the house and killed 6 Germans. They killed him, too. Subsequently, the remaining soldiers ran out and killed another two Germans and two policemen. The Germans withdrew … Anisimov did not retrieve the body of the hero, but left it in the village. The next day, the Germans came, took the corpse, chopped it into pieces, and threw it in a pit. For this operation, Kozhuhar recommended Anisimov, Druchin, and a number of other comrades (including himself) for decorations.76

In February 1944, this detachment was deployed to the 2nd Sergey Lazo brigade, which included four infantry battalions. The brigade was led by M. Kozhuhar. Despite their negative impact on missions, if drinking sprees did not develop into full-blown alcoholism, they had no impact on the career development of partisan commanders.

Debauchery The spread of “free love” in the Soviet Union was promoted by the propa­ ganda of free sexual relations in the period between 1917 and 1927; the communists’ struggle against religion; and the changes that were introduced into the way of life of the bulk of Soviet citizenry during World War I and the socio-economic transformations stemming from the two first Five-Year Plans, including mass compulsory labor migrations and the change in the population’s gender balance caused by more men than women being killed in the terror. It had an impact both on older people and the younger generations. In 1941 a female member

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Disciplinary Infractions in Partisan Detachments  •  209 of the OUN wrote the following about Kamianets-Podilsky oblast: “The majority of women here usually do not think about anything but merrymaking and nice clothing. It should be said that essentially there are no morals here.”77 Starting in the late 1920s, the Soviet government consistently burdened women, including mothers, with professional duties, yet did not allow them access to the sphere of governance or management.78 This subordinate role of women was also observed in partisan detachments. Partisan commanders—Soviet people torn from their families, who suddenly found themselves in a position of power that afforded them a certain freedom of action—conducted themselves in a similar manner. For example, the writer Mykola Sheremet claimed that women were the “weak spot” in Fedorov’s large unit: First of all, there are many of them; second, they are divided into two categories: cooks and mistresses. There are few girl fighters with Fedorov, and the command even objects to using them for combat work. In Fedorov’s large unit they do not take care of the culture of everyday life, of the purity of relations between women and men … Many adult commanders, parents of adult children, have taken young, frivolous girls as their wives. This diminishes the authority of the leadership. O. F. Fedorov needs a strong and authoritative commissar, who could influence him in a better direction … The current commissar, C[omrade] Druzhinin, is a person without his own will … The power-loving Fedorov decides everything and directs everything.79

The large Sumy unit had a strong and authoritative commissar, Semen Rudnev, and according to Minaev, former political instructor of one of Kovpak’s groups, the morals and manners of Kovpak himself and those of his confidants could hardly be described as puritanical: Each commander of a subunit or political instructor marries no matter whom without paying attention to the fact that he [himself] is married and has children. They transport this temporary wife on a cart; the men create special privileges for them … They are not sent on details, and so on. Each husband tries to clothe her, provide her with shoes, and give her the best food, and the other husband is not in a position to do this, and family quarrels ensue, which affects the fighting efficiency of the commander himself as well as the subunit. How much jealousy, how many annoyances, and sometimes even fights take place in the homes of married comrades. There are cases where a wife commands a husband in battle.

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210  •  Stalin’s Commandos This is not bad if she understands the husband’s incorrectness in battle, but a [wife] who does not understand the idea of a husband’s command is sticking her nose where she should not … Sometimes, married men demonstrate cowardice in battle for the sake of their temporary wife so as not to die and be separated from her. Unauthorized absences take place very often—a wife [goes] to her husband, and a husband leaves [to visit] his wife if they are in different subunits. There are very many complaints and resentments at the fact that all fighters, men and women alike, walk; they do the march on foot, but the wives are on carts.80

Documents have conveyed to us an assessment of the mental capabilities of the Sumy unit commander’s “combative girlfriend.” On 23 March 1943, Ivan Syromolotny, a representative of the CC CP(B)U, wrote to Strokach: “Recently, grandpa [i.e. Kovpak—A.G.] got severely chewed out with Rudnev. [Kovpak] got mixed up with some idiot woman, and she’s brought him into disagreement with certain workers.” 81 Half a year later, in a diary entry made during the Carpathian raid, Semen Rudnev confirmed Syromolotny’s description, noting that Sydir Kovpak “drinks and then sleeps with a woman who’s just as stupid as he is …” 82 The same situation existed in Saburov’s unit, which was reported to Khrushchev by CC CP(B)U lecturer and propagandist Kuzma Dubyna: Almost all detachment commanders have “wives,” per the example set by the unit’s commander and commissar. Everyone knows about it. Even during meetings, people will refer to, for example, “Kolichenko’s wife,” and so on. The “wives” have privileges over the rest. Those who were soldiers earlier—they don’t go out on missions … All this leaves an unpleasant residue and unnecessary talk and undermines the moral fabric of the men. In addition, some of these “wives” are spoiled, dimwitted “gals” that compromise the commanders. Doesn’t allowing such things—which eventually become a system—excessively degrade the atmosphere? Because there are no such “laws” in the one Zhukov detachment (commanded by comrade Selivonenko), and this detachment stands above all others with respect to discipline and order, and is one of the foremost in terms of combat actions.83

An SD report about the use of a German provocateur “false-flag” partisan detachment in March 1943 in the village of Studenok, situated in the northern part of the Sumy region, noted the following: “Women complained that ‘we’ [that is, the red partisans—A.G.] always want to take the youngest and most beautiful women with us.”84

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Disciplinary Infractions in Partisan Detachments  •  211 A commander or commissar usually had one mistress, but exceptions to this rule were not all that rare. For example, Petro Braiko, chief of staff of the 4th Battalion of the Sumy unit and future Hero of the Soviet Union, reported to Kovpak about the “devilry” of his immediate superior, the commander of the 4th Battalion: From the very first days the mine-laying instructor L. Nikolskaia, who was sent to us, showed [herself] to be a devoted, daring, and courageous fighter. Regardless of the fact that the m[ilitary] u[nit] [the large Sumy unit—A.G.] had an order not to send mine-laying instructors into battle or on operations … in the very first days after her arrival Kudriavsky decided to use her for his own purposes, reckoning that a commander should try out all female newcomers, as he usually did. But Nikolskaia gave him a firm refusal and did not become his “victim.” Then Kudriavsky disarmed her and sent her to a company as a rank-and-file fighter, hoping that after this she would “yield” to him. But it did not turn out that way. The company went into battle, and Lira Nikolskaia perished heroically in battle.85

In Oleksii Fedorov’s absence his deputy became deeply embroiled in the squabbles in his mini-harem: “Popudrenko is cursing the wives and forgetting about the main thing.”86 As one of Popudrenko’s “wives” later reported to the Komsomol, the loving commander “extorted” her sympathies. A complaint submitted to Fedorov produced no results: the first secretary of the Chernihiv oblast party committee “appeased” the female partisan, declaring that the rapist “is a really good man, you can live with him.” Under threat of being shot “for espionage” the woman capitulated and then became pregnant, for which she was expelled to another detachment, where the newborn baby was murdered on the order of the new commander; the unfortunate woman was finally dispatched behind the front line.87 Vasyl Yermolenko, former member of Yakiv Melnyk’s Vinnytsia unit, recalled that the command “carried on with women; one with one and sometimes two. We had someone who had been in encirclement, a sailor. So, that one may have had five. One hit him when he crawled into her tent during the night.”88 The informant claimed that this commissar from the Za Rodinu For Motherland Detachment “took [women] by force.” Oleksii Fedorov stated that in Anton Brynsky’s intelligence brigade, “owing to the depravity of the command personnel of the detachments in the indicated large unit, all kinds of venereal diseases are commonplace and plentiful.”89 Brynsky himself claimed that “up to 20 cases of venereal

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212  •  Stalin’s Commandos infections on the part of fighters and commanders” were recorded among his subordinates.90 According to a female former partisan from this brigade, a married partisan woman named Evdokiia Kuznetsova, who had infected five commanders, was shot as a “traitor to the Motherland.”91 Since contraceptives in the USSR, especially in partisan detachments, were not widely available at the time, the consequences of an active sexual life materialized quickly. In his journal Hryhorii Balytsky described what happened to these newborns: “That night Ekaterina Rudaia gave birth … Children born in partisan detachments usually do not live long; they are strangled like mice. Such a fate also awaits this child.”92 Aleksei Artamonov, a veteran of the Kamianets-Podilsky unit, avouched that in their detachment, a woman who had become pregnant jumped onto a horse, rode it at a gallop through the forest, and in so doing deliberately induced an artificial miscarriage.93 Sometimes commanders tried to send a pregnant wife by plane to the rear instead of wounded fighters.94 Rank-and-file partisans did not have permanent mistresses and wives because the command was unwilling to weigh down the operational unit with “ballast”—the wives of ordinary fighters. Therefore, they satisfied their needs in other ways. As a rule, in the territories that had been part of the USSR before 1939, particularly the central and eastern oblasts of Ukraine, partisan commanders waged a relatively harsh struggle against the sexual violence that ordinary partisans committed against the population, sometimes even shooting offenders. Thus, such incidents occurred mainly in formations where discipline was especially low. In the Kyiv Khrushchev unit commanded by the former policeman Ivan Khytrychenko, rape was punishable by demotion: 1. On 20 August [1943], during an economic operation conducted in the village of Hutomaretin, E. Hryshchenko raped a girl named Olia, who had been arrested on suspicion of espionage. In order to conceal the crime, Hryshchenko insisted that this girl be shot, even though it had been established that she was not a spy. 2. In his unit E. Hryshchenko systematically beat fighters and citizens. I order: 1. E. L. Hryshchenko to be removed from his post and demoted to rankand-file status. 2. For the committed offenses Com[rade] Hryshchenko is to be issued a severe reprimand with a warning.95

It is possible that the rape of individuals slated for execution by the partisans was tolerated by partisan commanders. Even before the creation

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Disciplinary Infractions in Partisan Detachments  •  213 of the UPA, the partisans of Anton Brynsky’s brigade began executing policemen and their families. According to the testimony of Raisa Sydorchuk, who lived in the village of Stara Rafalivka, before they were killed, the sisters of collaborators from the Pasevych family were raped: “Before their mother’s eyes they raped the older girl, Liza. They dealt with Nadia particularly savagely: they raped her, twisted her arms, tortured her. Klava was also raped before being killed.”96 Generally, throughout the western regions of the Ukrainian SSR, a number of commanders, viewing the local Ukrainian population as hostile, allowed their men to engage in practically any kind of “escapade.” For example, on 9 August 1943 the commander of the Kotovsky Detachment reported to his superior about the conduct of his colleagues based in Rivne oblast: “Batia’s groups left Blyzhnii through Berezuv [Bereziv]. Vorontsov’s group drank heavily, raped women, set fire to a house, fired shots constantly; the fighter Semykin, trying to shoot me, wounded his own [fellow fighter] Markov.”97 In February 1944 rapes were recorded in Volyn oblast: “For ex[ample], a 60-year-old woman was raped in Klen. In the village of Voromli a red officer, a lieutenant, entered [a house] during the rape of 5 girls. When he forbade this deed, he was nearly shot and he left.”98 In Ternopil oblast in March 1944, “When [the reds] get vodka, they drink until they lose all common sense. They throw down their weapons, shoot at houses, roll on the ground. They rape women en masse by threatening to shoot them. Women are gang-raped. Ten–twenty men rape one woman. There are numerous cases where between 20 and 50 women in one village are raped.”99 The accuracy of even a handful of Banderite reports is confirmed by a memorandum that was sent to the state security organs of the Ukrainian SSR by V. Buslaev and M. Sydorenko, two former partisans of the large Budenny unit commanded by Viktor Makarov: In the quarters in the village of Holybisy, Shumske raion, Volyn oblast, the officer Mezentsev, in a state of inebriation, beat two girls with a spinning wheel, demanding their agreement to cohabit [with him]. […] 4. In the village of Dubivtsi, near Ternopil, a woman of 40–50 was raped by the partisans Gardanov, Panasiuk, Mezentsev, the com[mander] of the detachment, Bubnov, and others … 5. In the village of Verkhobuzh, near Brody, the officer Mezentsev tried to rape a girl. She refused [to submit]. Then he, Mezentsev, took the girl and her 65-year-old mother, brought them to the street at night and under threat of using his weapon, he demanded their agreement.

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214  •  Stalin’s Commandos He placed [them] against a wall and fired his submachine gun over their heads, after which he raped the 65-year-old elderly woman … 6. In a village … near the city of Sniatyn, the off[icer] Mezentsev, after drinking until he became intoxicated, took out his pistol and tried to rape a girl, who ran away; then he raped her grandmother, who was 60–65 years old. During an inspection of this apartment, much communist literature was discovered. According to the neighbors’ statements, the son of this old woman was a teacher and member of the Communist Party, for which he had been arrested and shot by the Germans. Another son, in the Red Army, was drafted in 1940 … 8. In the village of Biskiv (in the Carpathian Mountains), in the billets of a large unit the headquarters’ cook … shot out the windows, at kitchen crockery, and the ceiling in the process of trying to rape the landlady, but she ran away. Afterwards he relieved himself on the table.100

The leadership of the unit did not implement any punitive measures whatsoever. After the war Viktor Makarov, commander of the Budenny unit, found employment as the head of personnel in the Ukrainian city of Kherson, in an organization dubbed “Mailbox 70,” that is, at a secret military plant.101 Even in the rear of the Red Army and on Polish territory, where the partisans conducted themselves with less licentiousness, they were still capable of dissoluteness. For example, according to a Red Army military counterintelligence (SMERSH) report dated 24 August 1944, fighters of the Chapaev Detachment, based in Cracow voivodeship, organized drinking sprees, made moonshine, sold weapons to the local population, and engaged in other reprehensible activities. For example, “according to the declaration of M. I. Kolodziejczak, elder of the village of Oparówka, several days ago three men, members of this partisan detachment, caught an old woman from the village of Oparówka in the fields, and all three of them raped her.”102 Things were similar in the German rear in Czechoslovakia, as SMERSH reported to the Military Council of the 1st Ukrainian Front: “On 14 November of this year in the village of Podhrady members of this detachment seized all gold items from the local population, raped a schoolteacher in front of her husband, robbed a store, and confiscated watches from many peasants.”103 Led by its commander K. Ivanov, this detachment fought in the mountains until April 1945. According to the Yugoslav communist Milovan Djilas, who later became an anti-communist, in 1944 the population of Yugoslavia experienced all the tribulations associated with the Red Army’s wave of looting and raping. The generals brushed aside all complaints submitted by the local

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Disciplinary Infractions in Partisan Detachments  •  215 communists. Finally, a delegation of Yugoslav communists informed Stalin of what was going on. The Soviet leader burst into tears and then launched into a tirade about the grandeur of his armed forces: “And this army was insulted by none other than Djilas! … Does Djilas, who is a writer himself, know what human suffering and a man’s heart are? Can he not understand a fighter, who has covered thousands of kilometers through blood and fire and death, if he frolics with a woman or takes some kind of trifle?”104 According to an entry recorded in the diary of Viacheslav Malyshev, People’s Commissar of the Tank Industry, in March 1945 Stalin warned the leaders of communist Czechoslovakia: “We know that some soldiers with little awareness pester and insult girls and women, behave disgracefully. Our friends, the Czechoslovaks, should be aware of this right now, lest the charm of our Red Army not turn into disillusionment.”105 The deliberate acceptance of an indisputable number of disciplinary infractions, an attitude that reached the very top of the pyramid of power in the Soviet Union, was one of the distinguishing features of the conduct of commanders and hence of the rank and file in the uniformed services of the Stalinist state.

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7 Internal Conflicts within Partisan Structures Thematically, the present chapter could be part of the section on disciplinary infractions, except that, first, there is too much data available concerning internal problems in partisan structures, and second, internal conflicts fell sometimes outside the scope of a disciplinary infraction owing to their cause. An understanding of the nature of these troubles, as well as their objective and subjective causes, provides a better view not only of some of the misfortunes suffered by Soviet formations, but also gives us more of a sense of the Soviet struggle behind the front as a war waged by special subunits belonging to different agencies.

Conflicts between Partisans of Different Agencies Friction between partisans subordinate to staffs of the partisan movement, GRU, and NKVD were often the result of interfering agencies’ interests behind the front line. First, in addition to each partisan feeling fairly confident in a dispute, there was no immediate arbiter. Second, leadership became aware of disagreements only after they had escalated to a very acute stage, or after they had already played out, with consequences of varying severity. From time to time, disputes arose between UShPD partisans and those in army intelligence. In particular, while in the Briansk forest, the commander of the Stalin Detachment of Fedorov’s unit, Hryhorii Balytsky, lost communications with the “Soviet mainland,” but was pleased to learn that an army reconnaissance group was situated nearby, whose commander was Bozhkov and whose commissar was Lomov. But it turned out that their GRU colleagues didn’t want to provide assistance, and moreover, took the Stalin unit to be a fake partisan detachment of occupiers. Balytsky’s situation compelled him to take a chance: I decided to go, despite Lomov having changed his camp [i.e. moved its location—A.G.] after Korobytsyn [Balytsky’s delegate—A.G.] left.

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Internal Conflicts within Partisan Structures  •  217 … We ran into an ambush led by commissar Lomov. We were ambushed … The slimebag set up an ambush against patriots of the homeland. We spent time getting to know each other. Lomov answered my questions indifferently. I couldn’t stand it, and started cursing him out. I stopped asking for and started demanding some help with power [for the radio], so we could communicate with the front … Finally, Lomov said: “I’ll authorize power for operation, but only for 10 minutes,” even though he very well knew that 10 minutes is hardly enough when the radioman hasn’t had any comm for three months.1

In the subsequent conversation, Lomov exhibited strong signs of Ukrainophobia and anti-Semitism, which disconcerted the Ukrainian Balytsky, whose detachment included quite a number of Jews. When the commander of the Stalin Detachment told of his successes at sabotage, Lomov replied, “I don’t give a fuck about you partisans, I’ve got my own mission …” Evidently, he had reconnaissance in mind. On this occasion, the two partisan detachments parted ways with no casualties, but losses did occur in another incident. The previously mentioned GRU “Center” at the Ukraine–Belarus border, between the Desna and Prypiat rivers, was commanded by Major Smirnov and Kuzma Hnidash (“Kim”). On 15 November 1942, they were joined by a UShPD reconnaissance and sabotage group under the command of Lysenko, which had exhausted its ammunition and lost communication with the “Soviet mainland.” Finding themselves in the “Center’s” chain of command, Lysenko’s partisans engaged in sabotage and combat activities and also formed new partisan detachments. The Lysenko group’s head of reconnaissance, Dmitrii Gapiienko, confirmed that “Kim” [Hnidash] monopolized and transmitted radiograms about completed activities to [South-eastern Front] Staff, but refused to transmit to the [Ukrainian] Staff of the Partisan Movement, claiming that he did not have authority to do so. This resulted in frequent disputes between Lysenko and “Kim” … “Kim” told of how his group had … derailed 11 trains carrying Germans and German equipment … But later, members of “Kim’s” own group told us it was all bullshit, and that “Kim” hadn’t derailed any 11 trains, but was simply relaying bogus reports to the Center …2

Thoughtlessly, Lysenko started to threaten Hnidash with impending exposure.

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218  •  Stalin’s Commandos Army leadership arrived from the South-eastern Front Headquarters on 18 March 1943, stubbornly attempting—at Hnidash’s instigation, apparently—to subordinate Lysenko’s group to the “Center.” Recalling that he had a different chief—Strokach—Lysenko declined the offer. Two days later, an airplane arrived from UShPD and unloaded cargo, a radio transceiver, radio operator, and two scouts for Lysenko. One of the scouts had the surname Ruban. Hnidash started to tell Lysenko’s partisans that Ruban, to all appearances, was a German spy. According to certain information, Hnidash made Lysenko an offer to have Ruban shot under his authority. Despite Hnidash’s suspicions, Lysenko’s group set off on a combat and sabotage mission, during which Ruban shot and killed Lysenko and wounded one other partisan before running away. Upon returning to camp, the group’s partisans were reassigned to different detachments, while “they [i.e. Smirnov and Hnidash—A.G.] immediately banned the radio operator from communicating with the Center (the Staff of the Ukrainian Partisan Movement).” Dmitrii Gopiienko speculated that Hnisash (“Kim”) arranged the killing, pitting Ruban against Lysenko. This argument was indirectly confirmed by subsequent actions of the GRU Center: “After Lysenko was killed, communications with agents was assumed by ‘Kim’ and the major-general, somehow for Kyiv … particularly valuable agents, who had furnished information … The group [of fighters], numbering 35 individuals, that belonged to Lysenko before he was killed was appropriated by ‘Kim.’”3 The UShPD Intelligence Department endeavored to elicit the details of this detective story, but came up against a wall of miscommunication: Despite sending two reconnaissance groups from Kovpak’s large unit with comrade Mironov, a representative of the CP(B)U Central Committee, at the disposition of detachments of the so-called “Center” under the leadership of Red Army GRU staff member Smirnov … Smirnov categorically refused to engage in any interactions with Ukrainian colleagues …, behaved suspiciously, and created an environment that resulted in our groups having to leave post-haste.4

Kuzma Hnidash (“Kim”), the man believed to have ordered Lysenko’s killing, was presently redeployed and later died while on a mission. On the other hand, UShPD partisans used Smirnov’s and Hnidash’s GRU “Center” partisans in their own way. This refers to the large Poltava unit, in which the deputy commander for intelligence was Chekist Yakov Korotkov, who used agent connections to search for alcohol. Situated near the “Center,” he came to an agreement with Karp Taranyuk, commissar

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Internal Conflicts within Partisan Structures  •  219 of the large Kotsiubynsky unit, that this unit would provide situational information to the Poltava unit. That said, Taranyuk was, at the same time, Kuzma Hnidash’s deputy. Mitrofan Negreev, the commissar of the Poltava unit, wrote that agent reconnaissance in the large Kotsiubynsky unit was “well-placed, and while ‘Kim’ used to get an overall summary, we would have already received it in parts from his detachments, and later, [we’d] get the overall [summary] two or three days later from comrade Taranushchenko’s [Kotsiubynsky] unit, which he sent to ‘Kim’ and to comrade Hnidash, a member of the Red Army General Staff [Intelligence Directorate].”5 The Poltava unit received commendations from Strokach and even Khrushchev until Korotkov’s “parasitism” was discovered—he had been sending intelligence data obtained by his army colleagues under his own name to UShPD. There were also some tense moments in the relationship between the Chernihiv-Volyn unit and Anton Brynsky’s (“Uncle Petya’s”) RU GSh KA brigade (military intelligence). Oleksii Fedorov attempted to prepare some of his colleague’s detachments for transfer to his own chain of command. Eventually, relations between the two commanders reached such an intensity that both sides escalated the situation to their own superiors. Fedorov reported to the CC CP(B)U that his subordinate commander and political commissar of the 5th Battalion’s reconnaissance platoon Babushkin had been killed at the end of August 1943. An investigation determined that the killing had been committed by a soldier named Metlichenko, of the Chernihiv-Volyn unit, by order of Petr Loginov (“Patephon”) who commanded one of Brynsky’s brigade detachments, his adjutant Gromov, and Voznyuk, the commander of the detachment’s military police group: Loginov, together with said individuals, systematically got Metlichenko drunk and cajoled weapons and ammunition from him, items that he obviously had to steal from his fellow partisans. During one such theft of an automatic weapon from a tent in the 7th battalion, Metlichenko was caught with an article belonging to comrade Babushkin, who was soon to be a victim of Logvinov’s gang, as Loginov and his company were forced to kill comrade Babushkin after learning of Metlichenko’s slip-up. The day following the killing, Metlichenko took Babushkin’s weapon away and gave it to Loginov personally, after which he again started to drink at Loginov’s and received two pocket watches as gifts from him, for his “clean work.”6

Brynsky maintained that the initiative for the killing belonged only to Metlichenko, whereupon the special agents of the Chernihiv-Volyn unit,

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220  •  Stalin’s Commandos making no particular effort to get to the bottom of the matter, arrested intelligence brigade partisan Voznyuk, “who was shot at Fedorov’s order without interrogation or clarification of the incident.”7 The squabbling between Fedorov and Brynsky ended only when the territory of the Rivne and Volyn oblasts was occupied by the Red Army. Similar disputes of a somewhat lesser intensity occurred between partisan detachments of the UShPD and the NKVD–NKGB. On 10 November 1942, Saburov sent a radiogram to Strokach, complaining about the state security department: Sudoplatov “missent” me five radios and an operational group from his resident station, they have intel[ligence] data that they get from my headquarters and send [to the] USSR NKVD, they eavesdrop on my network and interfere with normal radio operations. I consider it necessary to subordinate the entire group and use the radios as I see fit, failing which they must be split away from the detachments.8

Strokach, Ponomarenko, and Voroshilov, who left their respective endorsements on the radiogram, came to the defense of the tight-knit subordinate group against the rival department. Effective from the end of 1942, the NKVD–NKGB group, acting from UShPD partisan detachments, was subordinate to UShPD detachment commanders regarding general issues but, however, was carefully instructed to not allow UShPD commanders access to special group operational meetings, working documents, or radio transceivers, while detachment partisans were to be called upon to carry out missions only with the approval of the NKGB9— i.e. to remain at a distance and behave with utmost correctness with respect to their colleagues. On the whole, the relations between rivals were not distinguished by their correctness. After several months, Saburov’s subordinate group did the same thing to the Chekists that they had attempted to previously do with Saburov. One of the battalions of the Zhytomyr unit, under the command of Ivan Shitov, arrived in Rivne oblast in early 1943 and made contact with two detachments of the “Knights of the Sword and Shield” known as the “Pobediteli” and the “Ohotkini” (“Victors” and “Hunters,” respectively, in Russian). In a report to his immediate superior, Shitov indicated that there was conflict immediately. Commander of the Ohotniki Detachment, Mykola Prokopiuk, together with the NKVD Pobediteli Detachment, opened up and depleted the ammunition depot of Shitov’s detachment. In response, Shitov did not transfer, as requested, an

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Internal Conflicts within Partisan Structures  •  221 intelligence specialist or a sabotage group to the Okhotniki Detachment, despite orders from higher command.10 When the opportunity arose, Shitov did not fail to inform UShPD of the specific situation in the Pobediteli Detachment: “Medvedev’s group, commanded by Pashun, can’t find anything to do except get drunk and engage in commonplace dissipation [a euphemism for debauchery—A.G.]. They have designs on the life of their ex[ecutive] secr[etary] Fortus, who made them aware of their dissipation and its consequences. Fortus ran away from there and is with us.”11 Shitov asked Strokach, through Pavel Sudoplatov, to put some pressure on the unstable and unreliable Chekists, and asked for instructions on what to do with the hapless Fortus. At about the same time, other former subordinates of Saburov came into conflict with the Chekist partisans. In February 1942, the Stalin Detachment, which was part of Saburov’s unit, was commanded by Chekist Evgenii Mirkovsky. His chief of staff was Red Army officer Vasilii Ushakov. In March 1943, by order of the UShPD, Mirkovsky and a group of 50 partisans were transferred to the 4th Directorate of the USSR NKVD. This formed the nucleus of the Hodoki Detachment, which occupied itself principally with intelligence collection by agents. Conversely, Vasilii Ushakov was appointed commander of that greater part of partisans that remained under the UShPD. They served as the core of a new large Borovik unit, which principally engaged in sabotage and combat. Both the Hodoki and the Borovik unit operated in the same region. Between March and June 1943, the commanders began to steal experienced specialists from each other, with the Chekist apparently achieving greater success, as the offended Ushakov sent a radiogram to Moscow, addressed to Stalin: Mirkovsky … undertook the breakup of [my] detachment by way of deceit, bribery, and intimidation [of partisans] with some kind of secret authority. He tells local partisans … that he has received assistance from Moscow—arms and radios—but that my detachment hasn’t. He has disarmed groups returning from missions. Currently, he has 32 of my men, 5 machine guns, and 9 automatic weapons obtained in combat, i.e. 40% of the detachment’s weapons.12

In Ushakov’s words, these actions of Mirkovsky’s were supposedly authorized by Pavel Sudoplatov. The commander of the Borovik unit ordered the arrest of deserters who left as a result of “Mirkovsky’s quiet propaganda” and ordered that turncoats from the UShPD to the NKGB be returned.

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222  •  Stalin’s Commandos To stop the squabbling, UShPD transferred the large Borovik unit to another deployment location, while at the same time administering a severe reprimand to Ushakov. In turn, Pavel Sudoplatov, head of the 4th Directorate, sent a radiogram to Mirkovsky: “You are emphatically ordered to cease your bickering with Ushakov. If any unresolved issues remain, they should be settled on the spot in a Party-like manner …”13 A typical conflict between the UShPD and NKGB partisans, driven by the interests of their respective agencies, occurred in the Volyn at the start of August 1943. During the “Kovel railway junction” operation, saboteurs from the Chernihiv-Volyn unit started to blow up trains. As a result, Ukrainian nationalists stepped up their activities against the reds. Hryhorii Balytsky, commander of the Stalin Detachment, engaged in several actions against the OUN and the UPA. The Banderites, who did not grasp the departmental chain of command among various enemy subdivisions, began to also attack the Pobediteli Detachment of the USSR NKGB that was situated nearby, and in doing so began to interfere with the performance of its primary missions, i.e. intelligence gathering and terrorism. The commander of the Soviet “emissaries of death” hastened to meet his fellow saboteur Balytsky: Colonel Medvedev arrived in the evening with his people. He put several questions to me, accusing me of ruthlessly attacking the nationalist bastards. I diplomatically replied, “Fuck off, you can go ahead and negotiate diplomatically with the bastards, but I’m going to engage in outreach with machine guns and automatic weapons …” So Medvedev first tries to “scare” me, telling me about sending a radiogram to Moscow, and how Moscow will tell me who I need to attack and who not. I told him, “I will destroy the enemy wherever he may appear for as long as my Bolshevik heart keeps beating, and Moscow will never berate me for killing the enemies of the Soviet homeland or for derailing hostile trains.”14

Nevertheless, during discussions, an agreement was reached. Saboteurs would not blow up sections of railroad track near the Pobediteli camp. However, five days later, the Stalin commander received a radiogram: “To Balytsky. Pending a special order and based on operational needs, no sabotage is to be carried out on the Rovno–Klevan railway sector.” I was so infuriated to know that Medvedev was such a hard-core NKVD type, it just revolted me. It was he who sent the radiogram [apparently, to Sudoplatov, who in turn sent it to Strokach—A.G.] about how I was

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Internal Conflicts within Partisan Structures  •  223 interfering in his work … We had agreed that I wouldn’t touch this sector, but nevertheless, this fruitcake wrote to Moscow. He’s reassuring himself … What can you say about this slimeball?15

But then everyone started getting on better and drinking together, and Medvedev, according to Balytsky, hinted at peace: “Everyone came down on me, and said that I had been misinformed [possibly, regarding his correspondence with Sudoplatov—A.G.] about his relationship to me …” Disputes between Ukrainian Staff partisans and partisans from other regional and republic staffs have also left their mark in document repositories that are now accessible. For example, at the start of February 1943, Strokach complained to Ponomarenko about his subordinates who had operated within the Orel and Briansk oblasts: On 5 February 1943, Kazankov [the commander of the partisan detachment] arrested the head of the airfield, [UShPD member] comrade Turkin, who was sent by airplane to Elets. The reasons for the arrest are unknown to us. It is known that comrade Turkin did great work in getting the airfield up and running. On 6 February 1943, [D.] Emlyutin [head of the Orel–Briansk partisan zone] had Captain Logvin, who was carrying out my instructions in Ukrainian partisan detachments, arrested because Logvin had not introduced himself to Emlyutin.16

The complaint ended with a request to instruct Emlyutin and other partisan commanders not to permit similar actions to occur with UShPD representatives. In 1944, when Kovpak’s 1st Ukrainian Partisan Division, commanded by Petro Vershyhora, entered Western Belarus, a conflict arose immediately with local partisan leadership. Marinyak, the commander of the Sverdlov partisan brigade of the large Brest unit, sent Vershyhora a letter expressing dissatisfaction: The officers and men of your unit are carrying out unlawful acts … Products intended for the Sverdlov brigade and the operational reserve are being taken by your officers and men, with jeers and threats, no less … Brest unit partisans with proper passwords are being detained and not allowed to pass, which is affecting the performance of combat operations … I believe we can sort out all these errors without the involvement of the large Brest unit’s command [Colonel Sergei Sikorksi].17

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224  •  Stalin’s Commandos Men from the Kovpakov Division also had differences with partisans from the large Baranovichi unit. In particular, Vershyhora’s subordinates detained and disarmed a special Chekist group from one of the local units, while in another incident Belarusian partisans killed two Kovpakites. The commander of the 1st Ukrainian Division received an explanatory letter from Severin Kluchko, the commander of the Frunze 18th Partisan Brigade: On 13 April of this year, a group tasked with capturing a live prisoner, led by the chief of staff of the Kotovsky Detachment, encountered two horsemen from your division who were dressed in German uniform and took them for “Vlasovites.” While being convoyed to headquarters, the detainees began to run, and during the escape attempt, one of the detainees was killed by the chief of staff of the Kotovsky Detachment. After this incident, the chief of staff of the Kotovsky Detachment, together with the authorized Special Department of the same detachment, determined that the detainees were partisans.18

In another case, Klochko expressed displeasure to Vershyhora in connection with the “enticement” of partisans: I am again making you aware that individual commanders of your division are undertaking the unlawful recruitment of personnel from my brigade, i.e. they are taking individual “offended” partisans in my brigade under their protection … On 25 April 1944, Vasilii Ivanovich Muradenko and Nikolai Pavlovich Osokhin, partisans from my brigade and sensible of their old sins, deserted with their weapons, which had been bought with the blood of honest partisans, to your division … On 3 May 1944, Andrei Dmitrovich Polyakov, a partisan from my brigade who was under investigation, similarly deserted with his weapon to your division … I request and require the return of the deserters to my brigade … It is my hope, comrade Lieutenant Colonel, that you will put a stop to these extra-legal occurrences without the intervention of the Belarusian Staff of the Partisan Movement.19

And Kovpak Division’s men were not able to achieve complete mutual understanding with the forest soldiers of the Minsk oblast either. In May 1944, the unit’s headquarters received information that partisans from the Stalin 12th Cavalry Brigade had robbed local residents while posing as partisans from the 1st Ukrainian Division. Without further ado, Kovpak Division’s men seized several of their colleagues as hostages. Vladimir Tikhomirov, the Stalin Brigade commander and Hero of the Soviet Union,

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Internal Conflicts within Partisan Structures  •  225 sent demands to Vershyhora for the return of the stolen goods, threatening otherwise to shoot the partisan prisoners.20 In messages to their leadership after all of these adventures, Ukrainian partisan representatives accused their Belarusian colleagues of loafing and unnecessary brutality in dealing with civilians. In particular, while at the Kovpak Division headquarters, Leonid Korobov wrote to Khrushchev that the Belarusian partisans who defected to Vershyhora’s division had, on the one hand, become tired of keeping watch over the wives of commanders and political instructors and wanted actively to fight the enemy, and on the other, were staying clear of their own leadership’s high-handedness. One journalist left a very unflattering comment about Vasilii Korzh, commander of the Pinsk partisan unit and future Hero of the Soviet Union: “Partisans in raider groups call him the lord of the manor. When meeting with the regimental commanders of the 1st Ukrainian Partisan Division, he spoke as follows: ‘You poison my crops, you’re on my land—I won’t give you my airfield.’ He’s a rabbit, which is why he refused to engage in offensive actions and withdrew into the swamp.”21 It must be said that the inactivity of some Ukrainian partisans and their desire for swampy terrain also served as a cause for tension in their relations with their leadership, i.e. the Ukrainian Staff of the Partisan Movement.

Conflicts between the Commands of Detachments and the UShPD In almost any organization—especially one built on the principle of an institution, as opposed to a corporation—there will be friction between superiors and subordinates, as the immediate interests and desires of the rank and file rarely coincide with orders and directives from those higher up the organization. On the other hand, superiors do not always live up to the expectations of their subordinates, who often expect their superiors to offer encouragement, as well as assistance—at least in the form of advice. Such conflicts were typical of Ukrainian partisan structures. The greatest number of conflicts occurred in 1943–44. In 1941–42, partisans were rather poorly monitored by the Ukrainian SSR NKVD, and later by the newly created UShPD. By the start of 1943 the UShPD developed a system for interacting both with detachments and with other Soviet structures that were engaged in organizing and supporting the struggle behind the front line. Furthermore, principal Ukrainian detachments and large units received radio transceivers, and the strategic initiative shifted from the Wehrmacht

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226  •  Stalin’s Commandos to the Red Army. In this situation, conflicts between partisan detachment commanders and command centers—the UShPD—became common. To some degree, the large number of disputes was caused by Tymofii Strokach’s own personality traits. He was rather lenient in his relations with subordinates, and his management style was not typical of the Stalin epoch in general, not to mention the NKVD. In other words, Strokach allowed the partisans to argue with him and other staff personnel, unwittingly turning a blind eye to high-handedness on the part of partisan commanders. This aspect of Strokach’s character manifested itself after the war as well, when he was Minister of Internal Affairs of the Ukrainian SSR. Central Committee personnel noted that the former head of Ukrainian partisans was “neglectful in his work” with Ukrainian SSR Ministry of the Interior personnel cadres: “As a result of the poor organization of party-political and educational activities, numerous cases were observed of major violations of the Soviet rule of law, drunkenness, and common dissolution [a euphemism for sexual debauchery—A.G.] … In a number of cases, comrade Strokach exhibits permissiveness with regard to senior officers who tolerate official misconduct …”22 Strokach also reacted calmly to criticism directed at him by partisans, often to his face. At the start of 1943, after having learned that a number of partisan commanders and UShPD staff members had been awarded orders and medals, Kovpak felt slighted by Strokach and sent him an angry message: “Do you really think the role played by Syromolotny was below that of Logvin, Usachev, Martynov, and certain functionaries in your apparatus? Why didn’t my recommendation for Rudnev go through?”23 In truth, Syromolotny could not seriously be counted among the outstanding organizers of the partisan struggle. And Rudnev’s contributions were not acknowledged in a timely manner because, before the war, he had been under investigation for suspected sabotage.24 More often, Strokach was vilified behind his back, and the criticism was very harsh. For example, in a letter to his mother Radiy Rudnev, the son of the commissar of the Sumy unit, expressed puzzlement at her assessment: “I was quite amazed that you described Strokach as kind-hearted, because he’s appeared in my dreams as Lucifer, Astaroth, and other demons. He has been the object of much abusive language …”25 This letter reached Strokach, and a copy of the document is stored in the appropriate repository. Not every superior could work with subordinates after receiving such information. Nevertheless, all patience has its limit. At the start of 1943, Strokach and Khrushchev received a large quantity of compromising material on Kovpak from UShPD informers (radio operators who had been planted in the Sumy unit), as well as corresponding information via other

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Internal Conflicts within Partisan Structures  •  227 channels. A decision was made to summon Kovpak to Moscow and there either to command him to act in a more disciplined manner, or to remove him from his position altogether. The summons was made under the pretence of discussing with him the situation in the occupied territory and the operational plans for spring–summer 1943. The unit’s command took a wary attitude with regard to the Center’s initiative; they did not want to part ways with their commander, and commissar Semen Rudnev—together with Kovpak—wrote to the UShPD: “We consider Kovpak’s embarkation inadvisable. Only Syromolotny can report on the state of the rear.”26 As a result, Sydir Kovpak remained in his post, having survived one of the most striking episodes of a large unit’s command defying its superior authority. Confrontation was pretty much an everyday occurrence. Partisan commanders were constantly asking for and demanding ammunition, weapons, and explosives from the Center, as well as other items (depending on the situation), such as medical supplies, topographic maps, batteries and parts for radio receivers, clothing, footwear, and so on. When Kovpak failed to receive supplies within the expected time frame, he sent an angry radiogram to Strokach: “The lack of TNT and ammunition allows the enemy to maneuver freely. There are doubts [that] you have informed comrade Stalin. I am forced to report to comrade Stalin using the radio transceiver of the People’s Commissariat of Internal Affairs. The weather is flyable all the time.”27 It must be said that, soon after, official complaints—this time about Kovpak himself—were made to Stalin. Pilots of the Valentina Grizodubova Air Regiment refused to land at the Sumy unit, for fear of being held hostage by the detachment. Fliers who remained with Kovpak’s unit because of an aircraft mishap—which, they claimed, was the fault of Commissar Rudnev— later stated that they were used as combat soldiers, treated roughly, and there was a reluctance to let them depart for the “Soviet mainland,” and they were left behind until all the wounded had been evacuated.28 On 20 March 1943, an unpleasant surprise awaited Kovpak when he received the regular shipment of cargo from UShPD. One of the bags contained parcels labeled “To the young partisan,” dropped by the Komsomol Central Committee for all partisan detachments, containing the Komsomol charter, a copy of Statusnik Partizana, two or three brochures, and five to ten envelopes. According to Chekist Yakov Korotkov, Kovpak, using very obscene language in the presence of combat soldiers and heads of the households where the headquarters was located, expressed his indignation at the Ukrainian Staff of the Partisan Movement

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228  •  Stalin’s Commandos and at … the staff commander. Kovpak immediately ordered Pavlovsky, his Deputy for General Services, to pack the parcels back in the bag and send it to Moscow, addressed “To the young partisan Strokach, from the old partisans.” The warriors present there expressed their solidarity with this very mocking attitude of Kovpak’s toward superior authority and high-ranking officers.29

Eventually, the command of the Sumy unit sent a letter to Strokach expressing disapproval regarding the cargo hold-up. The commander of the UShPD, even though he was unhappy that Kovpak had gone over his head several times to appeal to Stalin directly, wrote Rudnev an encouraging letter, stating that: to provide … assistance when there is very, very limited means of transport available cannot always be done the way you or I would like. In addition, even the limited quantity of aircraft available to us cannot always be used because of weather conditions. At the same time, I’m telling you that ammunition and weapons drops to your detachment, as well as evacuation of the wounded, occur significantly more often than with other detachments […] We’re not loafers, as some at your end try to make staffers out to be.30

In another instance, Vladimir Druzhinin, commissar of the ChernihivVolyn unit, came down hard on Strokach with criticism concerning deliveries of cargo to partisans: It’s funny how it turns out that people who’ve been sitting in place for four months [referring to Saburov’s unit—A.G.] receive drops, but we— who move around—don’t get any. In addition, the simultaneous drops to us and to him do nothing but make a mess, and result in constant arguments and unpleasantness. Besides everything [else], our neighbor deceives [us] in this matter. I sent radiograms to your attention about dropping receivers and cinematographic equipment. And the result? Nothing but silence. Let’s allow it’s not possible to drop anything now, but you should at least respond. You dropped enough paper for us to print two newspaper issues, but that’s it. What are we supposed to do next? … We wrote asking that you drop some tobacco and soap … And again there’s been only diplomatic silence on this issue … The (mail) letters you’ve sent us represent a perfect Babel! Every­ thing’s been shoved at us at full blast and we’re getting cargo for

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Internal Conflicts within Partisan Structures  •  229 K[ovpak] and P[opudrenko] as well. Evidently, someone’s too lazy to even tell the difference between characters.31

But even in Saburov’s large unit—which was openly the envy of neighboring commanders because there were runways within his jurisdiction capable of receiving aircraft carrying cargo for partisans—deliveries did not always go smoothly. Stepan Oleksenko, the secretary of the KamianetsPodilsky oblast committee of the CP(B)U, wrote to Strokach: “Take some friendly advice: find and get rid of the scum in the apparatus. Someone over there, either consciously or unconsciously … is working for the enemy.”32 Saburov was sent magnetic mines without fuses; 10,000 rounds for Nagant revolvers instead of for PPSh automatic rifles; empty oil cans were received by those behind the front line instead of the required oil (the partisans ended up lubricating their weapons with burdock oil). In April, detachments received quilted cotton trousers and caps with earflaps, which gave rise to sarcasm in the ranks: [During the Russo-Japanese War] Tsar Mykola sent icons to Manchuria; staff sends us caps. That must mean they want us to bombard the Germans with caps […] It’s been hot, and almost everyone’s wearing earflaps. Even Saburov himself is wearing a cap. They brought him a general’s uniform, but no peaked cap. After all, it’s awkward to wear a kepi with a general’s uniform.33

In Oleksenko’s words, up until May 1943, nothing at all was known about delayed-action mines, which had officially been in service with the UShPD at the start of that year. You [should have] seen what people used to derail trains—you would clasp your head in horror … The boys make their own mines, and while it’s true that many blow themselves up with them, they don’t lose heart; they just beg another dozen fuses from comrade Saburov. Hey, what does [it] cost for a flier to bring a dozen packs of primers, if even in his pocket? You yourself understand that it’s a trifle, but it’s because of such trifles that there’s nothing available to derail trains … You understand that having such facts, but not as separate facts, [they] sort of culminate into a system.34

Constant angry radio messages from Vasilii Ushakov, commander of the Borovik unit, who also tried to appeal to Stalin, succeeded in aggravating Strokach, who sent a top-priority telegram from behind the front:

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230  •  Stalin’s Commandos I am astonished and do not recognize you. You had made such a good impression with me, that I do not want to believe your radiograms. Your peevishness and rudeness will neither improve the weather, nor cause us to receive additional aircraft. Don’t think that we can or must give you everything you ask for. This is impossible, despite all our wishes. As clarified by the Supreme Command, anyone who thinks the partisan movement must rely on provisions from the Center doesn’t understand anything about the partisan movement. Draw your own conclusion from this and don’t expect everything from Moscow, but get hold of it right there, from the enemy.35

Commanders continued to heap further abuse on staffs. At the end of 1943, during the course of several fine days, while waiting for promised cargo, Mikhail Naumov, commander of the large cavalry unit, expressed disappointment with Strokach’s deputy, who was directly involved with managing deliveries: What is the remedy for Sokolov’s irresponsibility and carelessness? I sometimes get the impression that this agent of the partisan movement in Ukraine is doing everything possible to make sure partisans operating in Ukraine are placed in unbearable conditions, while partisans [subordinate to the UShPD], who live in the Belarusian forests, enjoy all of the advantages […] Over the past three days, comrade Strokach has sent us two radiograms, where he indicates that the unit should operate in this area and along the paved Kyiv–Zhytomyr highway and Korosten–Kyiv rail line. Evidently, comrade Strokach expects active operations, but does not know that Sokolov has assigned me to the airfields. Generally speaking, it is surprising that—being 100 km from the front—staff doesn’t have enough sense to supply me with ammunition.36

Partisan criticism was largely justified. First, Ilya Starinov’s inspection of the UShPD airfield base in June 1943 supported the validity of Druzhinin and Oleksenko’s complaints. The audit identified negligence, in particular among cartridge packers, as well as among UShPD general services and operational department staff, including gross violations of property storage regulations, a reluctance to fill oil cans with oil because the process “took too long,” and even theft of property. 37 Second, and subsequently, after some of these deficiencies had been corrected, the UShPD continued to be paralyzed with corruption. For

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Internal Conflicts within Partisan Structures  •  231 example, staff trucks, which according to accounting documents were meant to transport ammunition, were actually used, in exchange for a certain consideration, to service mercantile establishments in Moscow, i.e. the Voentorg (main commissary for the Military Product Distribution), Glavtextilsbyt (Main Directorate for Textile Product Distribution), and even the canteen of the Rzhev railway station. “Partisan” vehicles were also often used to haul firewood for sale to city dwellers in winter. For such services, UShPD elite would receive bribes, not only in money, but also in vodka, cloth, leather, and other goods. Shergenev, the head of the administrative and general services department, informed Demian Korotchenko, the secretary of the CC CP(B)U, of this: In March 1943, 32 kilograms of flour, 5 kg of butter, and a number of other products were taken from the partisan storage depot. All of this was received by Ivanova, the secretary of the 5th department, supposedly for the hospital, and delivered to her apartment. Products were also taken on orders of department head Shinkarev … In February 1943, broadcloth for general and colonel overcoats, as well as gabardine and covert cloth for civilian suits, was issued for operational purposes from the Narkomtorg [People’s Commissariat for Trade—A.G.]. Instead of being used for operational purposes, it was distributed among staff leadership and department heads.38

The head of the UShPD had “his snout in the trough” as well, as was reported by supply handler M. Klimenko in a 3 April 1944 memorandum to that same Korotchenko: Leather was issued to Strokach for a leather coat and dress shoes, but according to some inexplicable document, it was written off as having been sent to a large partisan unit. If staff receives American footwear, it soon appears among the entire staff leadership. At the moment, staff storage depots have become exchange points: imported articles are replaced with old ones, and later all of the latter are sent to the partisans.

In October 1943, five pairs of gold watches intended for commanders of large partisan units arrived at partisan staffs from ministries. Instead, this “reward” was taken by Strokach and his confidants. Moreover, the head of the UShPD found a way to renovate his three Moscow apartments, costing a total of 11,000 roubles, paid for by his department.39 Another subjective reason for the relatively small number of deliveries to partisan detachments was the personal viewpoint of the State Defense

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232  •  Stalin’s Commandos Committee (GKO) chairman. Stalin mistakenly believed that deliveries behind the front line “weakened” the partisans, who were expected to obtain their weapons and ammunition as a result of combat operations. However, in reality, only a limited amount of military hardware could be seized as captured material. The Germans protected their depots with care. Partisans’ operations were carried out with disparities in the different types of weapons and ammunition within detachments. In other words, there was always something lacking to successfully conduct combat activities. The supply could have been replenished from the reserves of the partisan movement staffs and by flexible and rapid response by the Center to requests from the field. Regular and massive deliveries of weapons, ammunition, and specialists to the rear could not only have improved the effectiveness of Stalin’s partisan war, but could have generally accelerated the defeat of the Third Reich as well. It is well known that during the four years of the Soviet– German war, the Red Army fired 427 million artillery shells and mortar rounds and 17,000 million rounds of small-arms ammunition. Let us assume that the fronts operating in the South-east European part of the USSR consumed 25 per cent of this ammunition during the first three years of the war, i.e. 100 million artillery shells and mortar rounds and 4,300 million rounds of small-arms ammunition. During the first year of the war, the partisans received a negligible quantity of supplies from the “Soviet mainland,” while in 1942–43, large UShPD units and UShPD representative agencies received 75,000 artillery shells and mortar rounds and 30 million rounds of small-arms ammunition (approximately half of this over land, and half by air).40 Accordingly, Ukrainian partisans received, from the Center, amounts that were, respectively, 1/1426 and 1/135 of the amounts received by the Red Army in this theater of operations. In other words, centralized shipments of ammunition to red partisans in this instance amounted to 0.07 per cent and 0.8 per cent, respectively, of shipments to front-line units. Meanwhile, at least from the start of 1943, Soviet military leadership possessed the technical capability to significantly increase shipments to partisan detachments, but this was not done. Returning to the history of partisan formation activity, we note that Strokach’s excessive politeness with subordinates even elicited their disfavor in a number of cases. In particular, complimentary radiograms signed by Strokach or Khrushchev led to unreserved discussions concerning the mental faculties of Ukrainian staff members. Partisans looked forward to each UShPD radiogram, as it would generally provide valuable information, for example, about changes in the detachment’s route of advance,

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Internal Conflicts within Partisan Structures  •  233 new deliveries of supplies, enemy unit deployments, etc. Under these circumstances, the transmission of several cordial words from leadership was perceived by partisan commanders as a wasted expenditure of radio receiver battery power. In an operational report, Kovpak forthrightly alluded to the inadvisability of “over-the-air endearments”: At the end of August 1943, we received comrade Khrushschev’s congratulatory radiogram regarding the successful conduct of operations in the vicinity of the Carpathians … I tried to transmit the text of the radiogram to our small units, but nothing came of this. Each time, our radio only succeeded in attracting the attention of the Germans, who immediately sent out a plane.41

Commanders reacted even more skittishly to attempts by the Center to tighten its monitoring, carried out (among other means) through personnel transfers. For example, Sydir Kovpak, who had become accustomed to forest life, arranged a “cold reception” for newly arrived UShPD radio operators: We got off the plane and heard an irate “What the fuck is this?” There was this old man in a peasant hat and an old winter coat addressing the flight crew and pointing at us with a whip. “I asked for more explosives, and they send me broads!” Honestly, I thought he was going to use the whip on us and stick us back on the plane. Grandpa was awfully quicktempered …42

The new head of the radio station at the Sumy unit informed Strokach of subsequent events: Initially, nobody talked to us at all and we were generally considered superfluous people, but when messages started to arrive and [the commanders] saw that everything was received and transmitted without delay, they apparently concluded that we can work. Rebukes concerning the radio are no longer heard … But you know, it’s galling when people don’t understand anything and aren’t even aware of this, and then go on to prove the absolute opposite with scandals. Comrade Kovpak, the commander, talks all the time about how “[radioman] Karasev and [radio operator] Romashin are freeloaders and I’m going to send them to the company, and I’ll send you a relief ”—where he’s referring to the broadcasting station operator, who understands about as much about radio as I do about medicine. I’m constantly having to argue, stick up for, and prove myself, and even disobey certain orders.43

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234  •  Stalin’s Commandos After a while, if messages from unofficial informers can be believed, Kovpak told a blatant lie, stating, “When I met with comrade Stalin, he told me directly, ‘If you are sent NKVDers—NKVD personnel—then get rid of them, as they have no business being there.’”44 A scandal flared at the Sumy unit in connection with the arrival, on 20 March 1943, of Yakov Korotkov, a captain of state security, who had been assigned by UShPD to be Kovpak’s intelligence deputy. There were objective grounds for the appointment: intelligence gathering using agents was very poorly organized in the detachment. Nevertheless, the arrival of the specialist was met by a hostile reception from Kovpak, Rudnev, and their CC CP(B)U representative Ivan Syromolotny. Kovpak openly showed hostility and disdain, sneering at the Ukrainian Staff that, in the opinion of the partisans, had sent “superfluous personnel instead of explosives.” On the following day, Bazima, the unit’s chief of staff, handed Korotkov an assignment to the Putyvel Detachment as a common soldier. That same day, in Kovpak’s presence, Kovpak’s drunk deputy for general services, Pavlovsky, told Korotkov: “You know, we’ve had majors, captains, and lieutenants as commanders. We’d relieve them, transfer them to be common soldiers, and have them shot, while we’d promote common soldiers to be commanders.” Korotkov’s account continued: “With that, 21 March came to an end—if you don’t count the fact that Kovpak sent me to hell several times—when, not knowing what cart to hitch myself to, I turned to him.”45 Halyna Babiy, the radio center supervisor, according to Korotkov, had been ordered to not transmit the Chekist’s radiograms behind the front line, on pain of being shot. After a couple of days, Korotkov demanded that the unit’s leadership either send him back to UShPD or appoint him to an appropriate position. The discussion soon escalated: Kovpak lost his temper, ran about the room and, punctuating his speech liberally with obscenity, said: “Bullshit … we’ve already got someone who does intelligence work. Let [the UShPD] ask us what we need instead of forcing people on us that we don’t need, sending us all sorts of crap … There are wreckers sitting over there in staff, fomenting counter-revolution, receiving orders at our expense; after the war, we’ll be stripping orders …46

After it had been decided to send the Chekist back where he came from, Syromolotny, according to Korotkov, warned him through third parties of a possible assassination attempt by Radiy Rudnev, the commissar’s son. However, these were evidently empty threats, as the Chekist left for the rear without incident.

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Internal Conflicts within Partisan Structures  •  235 It was not surprising that after two weeks an informer reported from the Sumy unit: “Unit command is very displeased by the arrival here of representatives from the Ukrainian party central committee.”47 This referred to a visit to partisan territory in Polissia by Demian Korotchenko, the CC CP(B)U secretary, along with a group of party members and UShPD workers. However, Kovpak’s and Rudnev’s fears proved unfounded, and they got away with the Korotkov affair. In Kovpak’s native Sumy oblast, at around the same time, events indicate that Center envoys were trying to arrange the activities of partisan detachments and make them more subordinate to leadership directives. The created oblast staff of the partisan movement was led by delegated UShPD Colonel Yakiv Melnik, who was simultaneously appointed by the CP(B)U central committee to be third secretary of the Sumy underground oblast committee. Porfirii Kumaniok, the first secretary of the Sumy underground oblast committee of the CP(B)U, became his deputy. After some time, relations between Kumaniok and Melnik changed for the worse. Melnik maintained that he had made several comments about discipline and drunkenness to detachment commanders and commissars, and that Kumaniok had taken the side of the latter.48 Having become a person under others’ control, rather than in control himself, Colonel Yakiv Melnik fundamentally changed his attitude regarding the role of people higher up the organization. Mali, the head of the radio center of the Vinnytsia unit under Melnik’s command, reported to the UShPD: “I’ve repeatedly radioed you about command’s poor attitude toward me … Please be informed that the radio and radio operators have no security at all …”49 Mali also reported that Mikhail Vladimirov, the chief of staff, had told him that supposedly there were orders from the UShPD to shoot radio operators if they were in danger of being taken prisoner, since they knew many codes and could reveal them to the Germans. There was yet one more area of conflict between staffs and people in the field: covert sabotage of UShPD operational plans by partisan commanders. In a number of cases, this was related to a reluctance to carry out complex and hazardous, if not impossible, orders from Strokach: usually any trek into steppe or forest-steppe areas or into territories under the control of the OUN and the UPA. And certain red commanders who did not want to expose themselves to danger or hardship did not want to conduct any active combat or diversionary activities at all. Even Oleksii Fedorov’s unit sometimes roused the censure of the Ukrainian Staff. In Moscow for medical treatment, Hryhorii Balytsky, the commander of one of the Stalin detachments of this large unit, noted the following in his diary after meeting with members of the CP(B)U central

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236  •  Stalin’s Commandos committee and Strokach: “I was asked several questions: Why was comrade Fedorov’s large unit lying low and not engaging in diversionary activities, etc. (comrade Strokach had compiled a combat ledger for Saburov’s and comrade Fedorov’s large units). Afterward, comrade Strokach announced that Fedorov’s large unit hadn’t been doing a goddam thing except writing insulting radiograms.”50 Another example occurred at the start of 1944. Following the plans of the UShPD, the Volyn-based Lenin unit was to have moved into the Chernivtsi oblast (in the Carpathians, in the Bukovina region). Instead, Commander Leonid Ivanov got drunk with his subordinates and wrote a radiogram to the UShPD, stating that his large unit was engaged in continuous combat with the UPA, which was an exaggeration: “Frequent skirmishes with the nationalists have exhausted our ammunition. We earnestly ask you to drop, on the Dubrovsky airfield, ammunition, 100 automatic rifles for a reserve, explosives, ammunition, 50-mm mortar rounds, medical supplies, newsprint, and a printing press. We are ready to move into the designated mission area. Please reply.”51 The second pretext for inaction was the anticipation of supplies from behind the front line. Despite Strokach’s outbursts, the Volyn unit did not move into the assigned action area. Perhaps most revealing, in this sense, is the story of two Moldavian units with an 88 per cent mix of Ukrainians, Russians, and Belarusians.52 The Moldavian staff of the partisan movement did not exist, because there were no Moldavian partisans. Admittedly, the UShPD also did not achieve any notable success in promoting the partisan struggle within Moldavia. Located in wooded Polissia, Vasilii Andreev, the commander of the 1st Moldavian unit, also complained to the UShPD about ammunition shortages, asking for deliveries of more and more supplies. This upset Strokach, who sent a confidential radiogram to his deputy Sokolov on 20 June 1943: “Andreev’s complaint is nothing but insolence. In the future, don’t give [him] one more round. Andreev has everything he needs to carry out his mission.”53 The main thing that was lacking was the drive to go into Moldavia. Half a year after this incident, Mikhail Naumov put down, in his diary, his personal impressions of working with his colleague and his partisans: Colonel Andreev is the commander of the Moldavian unit. And he generally curses the day he agreed to command the Moldavian unit. He has a difficult mission, assigned late [in this, Naumov was unknowingly mistaken—A.G.], [his] will is weak, the detachments are feeble and fainthearted, and when the Germans appear, they quit their firing points more scared and faster than rabbits. Into Moldavia? God forbid, no way!54

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Internal Conflicts within Partisan Structures  •  237 And so two large Moldavian units did not move into their assigned area of activity, but joined up with Red Army units within the Ukrainian SSR. Incidentally, they were not the exception. About two-thirds of UShPD units and detachments did not carry out staffs’ operational plans for the second half of 1943, and the overwhelming majority also failed to do so in the first half of 1944.

Conflicts among Commanders of UShPD Detachments This section examines conflicts between commanders of detachments and large units of the UShPD and its representative agencies at the fronts, as well as detachment commanders who did not have links to the “Soviet mainland.” The intersection of interests among various Soviet power structures was not reflected in these quarrels. From time to time, conflicts would arise between unit commanders regarding supply behind the front line. In particular, Vasyl Behma, secretary of the Rivne underground oblast committee of the CP(B)U, wrote to Strokach that it was pointless to send five bags of supplies to one of Hrabchak’s detachments: Hrabchak hasn’t the capability to pick up the supplies and turns to Kovpak for carts, while the latter loses his temper because he waits for, receives, and sets up the area for supplies, but it’s not his unit getting them. Things need to be arranged so that there’s at least 2–3 bags [of cargo in one plane for each large unit—A.G.]. Hrabchak’s still going to move to the designated location with Kovpak’s unit.55

Because of the supplies received from UShPD, in January 1943 Kovpak had words with Saburov, despite the fact that a month prior to this, the two large units had successfully worked together to carry out the famous Stalin raid. Minaev, the former political instructor from Kovpak’s group, wrote that the operational interaction of the two adjacent detachments gradually fell apart: I am sure that there were side conversations in the detachment, that this grouping of three Aryan regiments near the village of [Hlushkievichy], would have been annihilated completely and the airfield area would have been in our hands had there been mutual communication with Saburov’s detachment. In addition, unhealthy conversations can be heard among detachment personnel about how “it’s as if the two commanders—

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238  •  Stalin’s Commandos comrade Kovpak and comrade Saburov—have become too big for their boots and will not knuckle under to one another.”56

There were extremely strained relations between Stepan Malikov, the commander of the Shchors unit from Zhytomyr, and Aleksandr Saburov, the commander of the Zhytomyr unit. Squabbles between these partisan commanders over supplies from the “Soviet mainland” continued to the end of the occupation period. Conflicts regarding partisans detaining each other were standard; especially when business transactions were being carried out in “disputed” territories. Moreover, even Kovpak, as a person who had great respect for his colleagues, permitted himself to use a harsh tone when corresponding with them. In particular, on 25 November 1943, the commander of the Sumy unit wrote a letter to Yakiv Melnik, the commander of the Vinnytsia unit, about how a group from the underground associated with Kovpak’s people, which included two partisans, had been completely robbed by Melnik’s people on 15 November 1943: “I believe the chief of staff must employ weapons in combat more often against the Germans, instead of in blatant looting stemming from idleness. I demand the immediate return of all plundered articles …”57 In response, Melnik, having conducted an investigation, wrote an obsequious letter to Kovpak on 4 December, pointing out, however, that his correspondent was poorly informed: My soldiers took nothing like what you claim, except for a typewriter, which was seized by police who had become part of my unit, but a group of soldiers from the Dzerzhinsky p[artisan] d[etachment] took it from them. You believed the false plenipotentiary [there is a strikethrough here in the document—A.G.] of the UShPD, [Khvoshchevski], who seized the typewriter from the Dzerzhinsky Detachment’s people. Having learned of this, my soldiers seized [the typewriter] from Khvoshchevski. If I run across him, I’ll gouge out his eyes for having previously disarmed my groups, which were coming out of an encirclement. I am returning a watch and four cartridges to you. However, necessity requires me to hold on to the typewriter, as it never did belong to the false plenipotentiary of the UShPD Khvoshchevski.58

At the end of the letter, Melnik presented his compliments to Kovpak, and, for good measure, apologized to him for the letter. Immediately after this correspondence Kovpak allowed himself similar “expropriations” of property belonging to the neighboring large unit, only he did so in a rather organized way. On 14 December, Borodachev, Saburov’s

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Internal Conflicts within Partisan Structures  •  239 chief of staff, radioed Strokach and Saburov: “Kovpak has brought all of our unit’s food depots under his control and is opening them up. This has all [supposedly] been approved by [Strokach’s deputy,] Colonel Sokolov. This issue requires immediate resolution, and I request expedited intervention by Ukrainian staffs.”59 At the end of December 1943, Kovpak was recalled to the rear and dismissed as commander of the Sumy unit. Most likely, the dismissal was in truth the fulfillment of a personal desire, which he had cautiously expressed since summer 1943. The 56-year-old Kovpak had tired greatly of long marches and battle. The unwillingness of commanders to obey each other or to make concessions led to operational slips and failures. In March 1943, Fedorov’s large Chernihiv unit was divided into two units. The majority of partisans, under Fedorov’s command, formed the core of the Chernihiv-Volyn unit, which took part in a raid into Western Ukraine. The rest of the detachment, which was still called the Chernihiv unit, was subordinated to Fedorov’s former deputy, Mykola Popudrenko, and was destined for action on the left bank of the Dnipro River. Hryhorii Balytsky, commander of the Stalin Detachment, told of how the division of military equipment and personnel was accompanied by angry scenes: All day until late at night, there were discussions with Popudrenko, Novikov, and Druzhinin, and comrade Popudrenko was goading someone all the time. It finally came to tears. Novikov [the commissar of the newly formed Chernihiv unit] and Popudrenko started to cry that Fedorov was leaving them with a small detachment. Popudrenko kept pushing to be left with good weapons and combat troops. But it was all in vain, things were left the way comrade Fedorov had stated them.60

It is worth mentioning that the newly created Chernihiv unit, which had been created using leftover personnel, was crushed by the Germans four months later, and Mykola Popudrenko was killed. Yakiv Melnik, commander of the Vinnytsia unit, recalled another incident. When his detachment moved into the Vinnytsia oblast, Melnik sought out and joined up with local partisans under the command of Michkovskii: When our large unit entered Vinnytsia oblast for the first time, comrade Michkovskii joined up with us [with a] group of comrades, and later, during combat near [Stara Synyavka], he was sent to reconnoiter and did not return, departing for the vicinity of Vinnytsia … There he presented a paper, written by himself, alleging that I and [Burchenko] had authorized him to organize partisan detachments, and so local partisans joined up with him …

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240  •  Stalin’s Commandos When I and comrade Burchenko proposed that he join up with us on the basis of the telegram we had received from comrade Khrushchev … he declined. We conducted discussions with him over the course of four days (he had around 700 men). Meanwhile, the enemy found and surrounded us … Comrade Burchenko assembled the commanders of the Vinnytsia detachments and proposed they go with us; they agreed, but Michkovskii declined, retaining 150 men and commissar [Vasiliev] and remaining with them in the Vinnytsia forests. After we withdrew, the Germans drove them hard … They lost many men as a result, and Vasiliev was seriously wounded.61

Something similar was happening on the other bank of the Dnipro. Mykhailo Salai, commander of the large Poltava unit, informed the UShPD that detachments under the command of Ivan Bovkun, Mykola Taranushchenko, and Vasyl’ Chepyha did not want to cooperate with him to strengthen attacks against German lines of communication.62 Disputes between the partisan commanders were caused, principally, by their character traits. In particular, the writer Mykola Sheremet noted, at the start of 1943, that many partisan commanders had highly developed egos: “You can often hear a partisan detachment commander say that behind the enemy’s lines, he is tsar and god. And why should he answer to anyone? He knows better. If that’s not the case—he’ll answer for it after the war …”63 Sheremet’s words applied splendidly to Andrii Hrabchak, commander of the Beria unit. The cause of his quarrel with neighboring commanders even became known to German intelligence: He’s so nervous he at times resembles a madman. He talks a lot and glorifies himself and his abilities, and so the gang leaders treat him like a superficial half-crazy person. He notices this and quarrels with everyone […] He came up with “The Wild One” as a sobriquet, wanting it to correspond to his actions […] He is extremely wary of arriving “recruits,” and has most of the newcomers shot for the sole reason that they seem suspicious to him.64

Stepan Oleksenko, the secretary of the Kamianets-Podilsky underground oblast committee of the CP(B)U, wrote of the same unit to the central committee: Their orders are more frightening than their radiograms. Detachment personnel suffer delusions of being persecuted by German agents. Hrabchak is a dangerous fool who dreams of glory and great deeds. His

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Internal Conflicts within Partisan Structures  •  241 diversionary activities and ambushes are very dubious, and he has many utopian projects; the commissar is worthy of the commander. They don’t trust anyone in the detachment and have placed covert monitors in the diversionary groups.65

Many of this partisan commander’s actions and written documents demand serious consideration of the theory that he was mentally ill. For example, according to Ilya Starinov, “The Wild One” told local inhabitants to make no secret of his partisan detachment’s strength or location, and set up a real border outpost near the camp as an idiosyncratic demonstration of strength.66 In another incident, Hrabchak willfully tried to name his large unit after the UShPD leader, which drew strong opposition from Strokach,67 so the unit was named after Lavrentii Beria. Even during generally normal conflicts with his neighbors, Hrabchak’s style was strange. For example, after a neighboring partisan detachment detained two partisans from his Beria unit, Hrabchak took a logical step—he sent the detachment commander a demand for the return of the partisans. But the form of this letter illustrates “The Wild One’s” particular nature: “In the event you oppose me, I will promptly have Moscow take steps with regard to your detachment, as it is disrupting a vast political campaign to organize uprisings among large garrisons. The national psychological makeup in the area of my activities is of exceptionally colossal political significance, any diffusion of which is absolutely unacceptable.”68 Hostility arose after a personal meeting between Ivan Fedorov, the commander of Rivne unit No. 2, and Hryhorii Balytsky, commander of the Stalin Detachment of the Chernihiv-Volyn unit, who wrote in his diary: “A real copper [Fedorov had been with the police before the war—A.G.], a major oddball, blabbermouth, and slacker … A very foul impression was left about this [Sergeant] Prishibeev.”69 German scouts noted haughtiness as a principal personality trait of another commander as well, Mikhail Naumov: “He is cheeky and arrogant in front of his fellow bandits.”70 Personal letters to other partisan commanders reveal a desire, on Naumov’s part, either to somehow attack his correspondents,71 or, on the contrary, to condescend to them.72 In a letter to Khrushchev, the commander of the cavalry unit demonstrated his ego, stating that “the partisan movement in Ukraine” was in a state of deep crisis caused by the idleness of most partisans: “In my view, only Kovpak, Andreev, Melnik, Fedorov, and a certain Naumov (you’ll forgive the lack of modesty) are the only ones who, up to now, have waged war in Ukraine.”73 To cope with the crisis, the commander proposed that Sydir Kovpak be placed in charge of the behind-the-lines branch of the

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242  •  Stalin’s Commandos UShPD, as the latter “would not hesitate to impose strict controls over all partisan formations in the field.” This “daring” proposal of Naumov’s was naturally rejected, while Naumov himself was called upon by Strokach— on Khrushchev’s advice—to show more respect toward his colleagues.74 However, at that time, Strokach was already used to similar orders behind the front line. After this latest quarrel, Stepan Oleksenko, chief of the Kamianets-Podilsky Staff of the Partisan Movement, Ivan Shitov, the commander of the Khrushchev unit, and his commissar Skubko sent a radiogram to Strokach on 1 July 1943: “The lack of understanding from the first days after the meeting has been addressed, we are now on a truly genuine, Bolshevik-like, mutual footing, and let nobody think we’ll be fighting each other instead of the Germans.”75 Let us also present incidents known to us of the murder of partisan commanders by others. In spring 1943, the large Sumy unit moved to the north Kyiv region. Later, Kovpak wrote that: we soon got in touch with the Rozvazhensk partisan detachment of Kyiv oblast, numbering up to 80 poorly armed men with nothing to do at the time of the meeting. The detachment was subordinated to us for the purpose of organizational reinforcement. Mark Jakovlevich Savchenko, the detachment commander and former chief of police of the Rozvazhensk district, was exposed by us as a traitor to the Motherland and shot.76

According to the warrant for the execution of the local detachment commander, this individual actually had been a policeman, but later, as a result of official malfeasance while serving the Germans, he fled to the forest and created a partisan detachment. One of the charges brought by Kovpak’s people was that “as a commander of an underground partisan organization, Savchenko had categorically prohibited the execution of Germans after having disarmed one of the police detachments.”77 The warrant contains no information about Savchenko’s anti-Soviet activities—only allusions to his slovenliness, drinking binges, and slacking. Thus, in effect, Kovpak’s people executed a loyal partisan commander who was disposed toward Soviet power, even if he did doubtless have a dubious past. Another case took place in Chernihiv oblast. Ivan Bovkun, commander of the 13th Tank Division’s 19th Motorized Rifle Regiment, was surrounded and captured in the fall of 1941 and later spent several months as a waiter in the German officers’ mess in Nezhin. In May 1942, he escaped to the partisan detachment commanded by Stratilat, where he was made a

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Internal Conflicts within Partisan Structures  •  243 company commander. By chance, the detachment soon became scattered as a result of battles with the Germans, and Bovkun became commander of an independently operating partisan group comprising several individuals. Another partisan group, commanded by Konstantin Babych and Aleksei Brusilovets, numbering 11 men, was operating nearby, and Bovkun tried to convince the commanders and the men to join the ranks of his detachment. This idea was rejected, and at a meeting of the Bovkun Detachment’s communist cell, a decision was made—at the commander’s insistence—to commit murder. On 14 October 1942, the commanders of the neighboring partisan group were invited to attend yet another round of discussions. What happened next is described in the materials of a CP(B)U central committee investigation: During the discussions in the chicken [hut—A.G.], Babych [was shot in the face with a pistol78] and wounded by Bovkun, whereupon [Babych] ran outside, trying to save himself, but Bovkun ordered a partisan in his detachment to catch up to Babych and shoot him down, which is what happened. Just then, Kikhtenko—the commissar of Bovkun’s group—fired a burst at point-blank range from an automatic rifle at Brusilovets— the commissar of Babych’s group—and killed him in front of all the partisans. Only after this was Bovkun able to get hold of the weapons in Babych’s partisan group and incorporate the group’s personnel into his own detachment.79

After some time, Bovkun ordered one of his partisans, Shevelev, along with Oksana Borovko (Bovkun’s wife) to kill the partisan Shumeiko, the wife of a combat soldier and mother of six children, because she had thoughtlessly threatened to expose Bovkun publicly. In May 1943, Bovkun’s partisans attempted, at his instigation, to kill the command staff of one of the UShPD partisan groups (commanded by Krivets). Having failed in the attempt, Bovkun started to steal air-dropped UShPD supplies from other detachments at gunpoint. This enterprising partisan commander was able to intimidate several detachments into submission in this manner. Gradually, the “For the Motherland!” unit grew to 3,000 men. In September 1943, during a trip to Moscow, Bovkun’s commissar Stratilat—who had been appointed by Bovkun in place of Kikhtenko and whose relations with Bovkun had become strained—disappeared. Presumably he was killed by a group of partisans from the “For the Motherland!” unit, led by the aforementioned Oksana Borovko, which had also been sent by Bovkun to the capital on the day in question.

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244  •  Stalin’s Commandos On 4 January 1944, Ivan Bovkun was awarded the title of Hero of the Soviet Union for having successfully organized assistance, provided by his partisans, to the Red Army during the forced crossing of the Dnipro. However, when allegations regarding his “in-house” killings surfaced, the CP(B)U central committee handed the case over to the NKVD. Bovkun was tried, stripped of all rank and titles, and sentenced to prison. After serving several years, Bovkun was liberated from prison—apparently changes in Ukrainian party leadership allowed the patrons of this uncompromising partisan to “hush up” the affair. In addition, Bovkun’s military rank and awards were restored, including the Gold Star of the Hero of the Soviet Union. The former commander of the “For the Motherland!” unit lived out his life in Lviv as a military retiree.

Conflicts within UShPD Detachments The relationship between detachment commanders and their subordinates affected literally every partisan in the detachment. The nature of these relationships are most revealingly demonstrated by conflicts within detachments. Perhaps the most extraordinary example occurred during the initial period of the war. The focus of this story is State Security Major Vsevolod Kuznetsov, who before the war had been the head of the 3rd Special Department of the NKVD Directorate in the Odesa oblast.80 He created a detachment comprising 13 local Chekists, who literally went underground into caves on 15 October 1941. With them were six state security representatives from Moscow, who had been detached to South Ukraine. In Soviet documents, this Moscow group was called the “special resident station of the USSR NKVD,”81 and it was led by State Security Major Vladimir Kaloshin. Romanian intelligence identified the detachment’s agents left above ground. Communication was broken off with the outside world. One partisan was killed during an attempt to emerge from the caves—but this turned out to be the detachment’s only combat loss. The 1944 conclusion of an NKGB investigation into the group’s activities stated: “An unprincipled enmity arose between Kaloshin and Kuznetsov … Kuznetsov excluded Kaloshin from leadership activities and placed the entire Moscow group in a difficult position … At Kuznetsov’s order … they were all arrested on the pretext of supposedly conspiring against him.”82 In June 1942, one of the Muscovites—Nikolai Abramov—was freed on bail by Kuznetsov’s people, while the remaining five individuals, including Kaloshin, were shot. On 28 August, an Odesa Chekist was shot for suspicion

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Internal Conflicts within Partisan Structures  •  245 of having stolen a small loaf of bread and a few crackers. Soon after, one partisan died of typhus. Two more soldiers—a man and a woman—were shot on 27 September. The reason for the punishment was noted as “theft of foodstuffs and sexual promiscuity.” The woman gave birth to a child, who died three hours after being born. On 21 October, Kuznetsov had another five subordinates executed on suspicion of yet another conspiracy. On that same day, Nikolai Abramov dispatched the rampaging commander into the next life with two bullets to the head. At Abramov’s request, partisan Oleksandr Glushchenko shot one of Kuznetsov’s faithful henchmen as well. After some thought, Glushchenko killed the penultimate surviving partisan—Abramov—and then went into the city. In the course of his misadventures, he set a new record of 13 months for living continuously underground. Subsequently, hiding in his wife’s apartment, Glushchenko stopped fighting. According to the laws of the Soviet system of the time, his actions and subsequent refusal to fight amounted to treason. To avoid this charge, the detachment self-destructed. On the day the Red Army returned, Glushchenko turned himself in to the NKGB and made a clean break of things. Accompanied by a few soldiers, he was sent to the scene of the incident, where, showing off in front of his companions, he began to toy with a grenade. If the escorting soldier’s version is to be believed, Glushchenko blew himself up inadvertently.83 This fragment of the repressive system—the NKVD detachment—had been so affected by paranoia and the struggle for power during the 1930s that an imaginary enemy was enough to destroy the group. Another detachment was formed in the fall of 1941 in Odesa and redeployed by the NKVD84 into the catacombs;85 their commander was Aleksandr Soldatenko, a veteran of the state security organs. At some point during the height of the great Holodomor famine, he had served as political plenipotentiary of the Horlivka municipal department of the GPU in Donbas.86 Having established a good career, in 1938 he left to be in charge of Gulag prisoners.87 However, in 1940, Soldatenko was dismissed for misconduct. When the war began, he was head of a district finance department in Odesa oblast. By the start of November, nine ordinary Soviet people were under Soldatenko’s command.88 The commander was accompanied by his mistress Malitskaya. Having discovered the group, the Romanians blocked the exits from the catacombs. Soldatenko shot one of the partisans for his proposition that they surrender. When food began to run out, the commander ordered the elimination of refugee couples who had fallen in with the detachment. Judging from the surnames of the victims, they had been escaping the

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246  •  Stalin’s Commandos anti-Semitic terror. In a report to Antonescu, Sigurant¸a’s operatives wrote that the decision “was made by Soldatenko on the basis of a specific Bolshevik criterion. Bialik and his wife were not members of this group and were not members of the Communist party.” The bodies “were cut into pieces, placed in barrels, and pickled in salt. These provisions were consumed over some time …”89 Later the remaining people started to wonder: Who would be the next to go under the knife? That is why the subterranean inhabitants killed the commander and his girlfriend. They were not able to emerge from underground immediately, owing to the clouds of smoke the Romanians were using in attempts to drive out the group. While waiting for the smoke to subside, the partisans partially consumed the bodies of Soldatenko and Malitskaya. When the survivors finally reached the surface, they found themselves in the hands of the authorities, and were executed.90 In this case, the expression “cave Stalinism” is not just a propagandistic cliché. This affair was a direct result of not only the commander’s experience—he had been involved in Holodomor and served in the Gulags, and was afraid that his past would be exposed under Romanian occupation—but also of the general official prohibition on surrendering to the enemy as a prisoner of war. The rule of “We have no prisoners of war— we have traitors” was in force in the Soviet Union, and so a system that was inherently cannibalistic again spawned cannibalism. More representative than these two cases is day-to-day life in the detachments. We should begin, as usual, with the Sumy unit, where, according to Captain of State Security Yakov Korotkov, the commander and commissar derived their respect through physical violence: everyone—command staff and political staff—had been taken with “face-smashing,” which had become an essential and universal substitute for existing methods of education, conceived by Kovpak, who continues to smash the faces of his soldiers to this day. On 22 March he took a stick and went looking for a staff driver named Vas’ka, to thrash him, but the driver hid from him. On 10 April, he beat up radio technician Karasev; on 9 April, he threatened to have the weatherman Kokh shot … There is dissolution, foul language, and so on …91

Halina Babiy, a radio center supervisor, testified that the commander of the Sumy unit was not inclined to engage in educational discussions with his subordinates: “Kovpak always called everyone an idiot and cursed them out … He was very difficult to understand, and it was difficult to talk to him about anything because he didn’t want to understand, and if he put

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Internal Conflicts within Partisan Structures  •  247 his foot down on some matter, then—right or wrong—he would swear and argue to the point of hysteria.”92 Subordinate leaders similarly did not always observe the peer-to-peer relationship principle in dealing with their subordinates. For about a year, Vasiliy Kudryavskiy was commander of the Krolevets Detachment in the Sumy unit, which was later reorganized into the 4th Battalion of that same unit. In the fall, his “adjutant” Korolev, whose patience had worn thin along with that of other partisans, wrote to Kovpak: “Finding ourselves in the Carpathians, former battalion commander Kudryavskiy showed no respect for me, taking me to be his personal porter and loading me down with so many of his daughter Zhenia’s things that I could not move. During that time, I observed him to personally possess six ordinary and three gold watches, which he had taken from the men.”93 Kudryavskiy traded pistols and watches taken from the men for vodka. In addition, he publicly beat subordinate commanders, arbitrarily “redeployed” them from position to position, and made the battalion’s physician his personal doctor. Similar behavior by Oleksii Fedorov, commander of the Chernihiv unit, was described by writer Mykola Sheremet for Khrushchev: “He easily offends people who are not in agreement with him on some point, does not tolerate objections, and has an overdeveloped ego. In conversation, he cannot refrain from swearing and he uses vulgar language with women.”94 According to Balytsky, soldiers being beaten by commanders was the most common method of “education” in the most combat-ready detachment of the Fedorov unit. For example, on 12 October 1942, Hryhorii Balytsky wanted to have a soldier named Palyanitsa shot for evading a direct order, saying rude things to common soldiers, arguing with commanders, beating his comrades-in-arms, and threatening to kill them “during the first battle.”95 Balytsky took pity on Palyanitsa. Instead, he beat him and then condemned him to be shot, with the sentence being suspended. There is not much doubt about the accuracy of German information regarding methods of communication between superiors and subordinates in the 1st Moldavian unit: [The unit commander, Vasilii] Andreev himself is more than simple and quiet, he behaves almost familiarly with his bandits … At the same time, he severely punishes those who do not carry out his orders. He whips such individuals and even has them shot. But the bandits do not feel offended by this; in fact, they serve him with the loyalty of a dog. Everything the bandits steal they carry away to Andreev, who then redistributes this to the best bandits as a reward.96

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248  •  Stalin’s Commandos Not a single radiogram on the prohibition of the use of physical force in detachments was found in the course of these archive searches. This may be related to the fact that similar behavior predominated at partisan command centers. In a memorandum dated 3 April 1944, supply handler M. Klimenko informed Demian Korotchenko, the CP(B)U central committee secretary, that: “Beatings of younger ranks by older ranks flourishes at staffs. Supply handlers are the main targets [if they refuse to steal property—A.G.], because you see, they don’t want to be under the thumb of the staff businessmen.”97 According to one of the unit’s veterans, Vasyl Yermolenko, cronyism, clout, hazing, and preferential treatment for favourites flourished in Yakiv Melnik’s unit, including when dangerous missions were assigned. In Yermolenko’s words, the commander managed his detachment through his deputies and subordinates: “I saw Melnik for the first time when I was wounded … And what kind of commander is he if he doesn’t know what’s going on in the detachment? And such things went on there, that nothing can be told about them.” 98 Yermolenko did not reveal any additional details. Possibly, he had in mind killings among partisans. For example, in the 2nd Regiment of the Chernihiv unit “For the Motherland!”, a rank-and-file soldier was shot on 14 August 1943 by his superior: While on duty, I. I. Tkachenko flagrantly violated military discipline by allowing his subordinates to consume alcohol and by actively participating in this activity, having paid for the vodka with salt obtained for the partisan detachment during an operation. Being in a profoundly intoxicated state … I. I. Tkachenko unlawfully used his weapon and killed V. V. Voronov, a soldier [who] was also very intoxicated and brawling.99

As punishment, Tkachenko was demoted from unit commander to rankand-file soldier. As we can see, the penalty was very mild. As a result, a similar incident took place a week later in the 3rd Regiment of the same unit, where one of the soldiers shot and killed an amicably disposed peasant with his automatic rifle while engaged in a drunken brawl with another partisan.100 Regimental command sentenced the soldiers “to be shot, with execution suspended,” or in other words, both got off with a reprimand. From time to time, conflicts flared within the partisan formation command staff itself. In particular, Ivan Syromolotny, the UShPD representative in the Sumy unit at the end of 1942 and the start of 1943,

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Internal Conflicts within Partisan Structures  •  249 became close friends with Kovpak and Rudnev. However, he then began to quarrel with the partisans. Most likely, his behavior changed because he found himself deprived of rewards at that time. In particular, Syromolotny bickered with Rudnev. According to political instructor Ivan Kovalev, on 5 April [1943], brigade commissar comrade I. K. Syromolotny was present in a group that was drinking and … he informed me of the following, in the strictest secrecy. He said: “You’ve got good people in the detachment, but now your commissar Rudnev—he’s the enemy. He was in jail before the war, and should have been eliminated completely. In the detachment, he gained and won some easy glory at the expense of the guys doing the fighting. Your commander Kovpak is a jewel, but your commissar is the enemy, was the enemy and remains the enemy.”101

After such words, the partisans of the Putyvel Detachment wanted to have Syromolotny shot, but the latter was able to save himself, and Kovpak and Rudnev sent him to the Soviet rear. After this incident, relations between Kovpak and Rudnev began to deteriorate. The height of the tension between them occurred in the summer of 1943, during the Carpathian raid. On 24 June, the commissar described an illustrative incident in his diary: during the Carpathian raid, the partisans captured four nationalists. Kovpak wanted to have them all shot, but Rudnev opposed the idea, and later these prisoners were exchanged for captured partisans. The next day, Kovpak’s forces came to the Horyn River, with the idea of forcing a crossing. “However, a group of around 500 nationalists occupied Zdvizhdzh and announced that they would not allow a temporary bridge to be built. Kovpak decided that if that was the case, we should engage with and wipe out the village, which I vigorously opposed.” Discussions went nowhere, and so “Kovpak again burst into a rage, [and wanted to bring down] artillery immediately and wipe the village off the face of the earth …”102 Rudnev was able to convince Kovpak not to destroy the village, while Kovpak’s messengers, in turn, were able to convince the nationalists to leave the village without a fight. On 3 August 1943, Semen Rudnev was killed during the battle for Deliatyn, while “Zagorsky”—the code name of one of Stokach’s informants—informed Khrushchev that the commander of the Sumy unit took satisfaction at the news of the death of his commissar: “Steps taken in the [Rudnev] investigation have not yielded any positive results to date. Kovpak did not undertake any steps, because he had quarreled with him and wanted him dead. On 20 August, Terekhov, the commander of

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250  •  Stalin’s Commandos the mine-layers, reported that Kovpak had said, about Rudnev: ‘One less cheapskate.’”103 Oleksii Fedorov, commander of the Chernihiv unit, demonstrated egoism with respect to his closest subordinates. After the war, in his well-known book An Underground Oblast Committee Acts, he greatly distorted events—an accusation made by former secretary of the Chernihiv oblast committee, Pavlo Rud’ko, in a personal letter. Rud’ko, whose health deteriorated because of wounds he received in action, recalled some of Fedorov’s orders that had resulted in the “wandering” of partisan groups in the Chernihiv area in the fall of 1941. He also accused Fedorov of cowardice and of abandoning his subordinates after deceiving them, resulting in the deaths of many, including members of the Chernihiv oblast committee. Rud’ko’s letter ended with a request: To this effect, I ask that you, not by way of umbrage but by way of factual information, provide your comments and make them known to higher ranking central Party bodies for their review […] Having read your book, I now understand the 1944 decision of the Chernihiv CP(B) U oblast committee to expel me from the Party … I now suggest that you informed the Chernihiv oblast committee and, possibly, the CP(B) U central committee incorrectly … You do not want to write the truth, because you decided to depict me in the book as an unfavorable individual, and have chosen to distort the facts.104

However, everything that Rud’ko condemned Fedorov for as a memoirist (in particular, the allegation that Rud’ko was a coward) was left unchanged by Fedorov in subsequent editions of his book.105 Fedorov behaved in a similar manner with regard to his most combative commander, Hryhorii Balytsky. And this was despite their frequent drinking bouts together. Having learned that the UShPD was supposedly planning to award Balytsky a second Gold Star of the Hero of the Soviet Union for his successful diversionary activities, Fedorov— who by that time had himself been twice decorated Hero of the Soviet Union—immediately sent Strokach a telegram: “I strongly urge you to exercise restraint until our meeting.”106 Evidently, Fedorov was quite concerned about his standing, not wanting there to be two individuals in the Chernihiv area who had been twice decorated Hero of the Soviet Union. Although, as it turned out, the UShPD was not planning to award Balytsky a second Gold Star, Fedorov’s position in this matter clearly highlights his egocentrism. Be that as it may, Balytsky was indeed a combative commander. At the same time, Vladimir Druzhinin, Fedorov’s

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Internal Conflicts within Partisan Structures  •  251 commissar, who did not play a significant role in the unit’s activities, was decorated Hero of the Soviet Union under Fedorov’s auspices—for his personal loyalty to his commander. Conflicts took place for other reasons in the Ukraine partisan cavalry unit. Mikhail Naumov possessed not only personal courage, but a certain belligerence as well. These qualities were not as strongly developed among the command staff of his unit. For example, during the famous steppe raid, some detachments broke away from the newly formed cavalry unit because their commanders did not want to advance into South Ukraine. After several months, in September 1943, Naumov’s commanders began to urge him to leave the central areas of the Zhytomyr oblast and take the detachment north, into the Polissian forests and swamps: My commissar and chief of staff were very concerned that we had remained too long inside the Malin–Korosten and Korosten–Chernyakhov triangle of rail lines and, scaring themselves, created an imaginary danger, deliberately complicating situational information … My intelligence assistant, Sen[ior] Lieut[enant] Havrilyuk, arrived from near Korosten … He … outlined the operational situation to me in great detail, and insistently urged me not to let the cowards have their way … I immediately assembled all my assistants and staff for a meeting … I was finally forced to express myself rudely … I ordered them to shut their mouths and to not dare discuss my orders again …107

A dormant quarrel came to a bloody conclusion in the Khrushchev unit, whose commander was Volodimir Chepyha, and whose commissar was Nikolay Semenyshyn. During the raid to the west, the unit became divided. Chepyha, along with a detachment of 100 men, entered Poland. Meanwhile, 300 men led by Semenyshyn remained east of the Buh. On 10 May 1944, the head of the “Koretsky” Ukrainian SSR NKGB operational group functioning in this area radioed its leadership: “On 6 May, in the village of Gorostyta (60 km north-east of Lyublin), a conspiracy of partisans from Chepyha’s large unit brutally killed the unit’s commissar, USSR Supreme Soviet Deputy Semenyshyn, along with his adjutant V. S. Domoleg. The bodies of the slain were looted and left lying in a field. Semenyshyn’s gold teeth were torn out.”108 This information was relayed to the UShPD, which requested a report from the Khrushchev unit’s commander about what had happened. After the investigation, Chepyha informed Strokach that Semenyshyn, afraid of leading the detachment into Poland, delayed his fording of the Buh; he required the command staff to join with the Red Army (for which he

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252  •  Stalin’s Commandos promised the commanders positions in Moscow and Kyiv), engaged in excessive drinking, handed ammunition over to third parties, and beat and intimidated his command staff. This mismanagement resulted in the death of the commander of one of the unit’s battalions. Chepyha described the deputy’s killer in positive terms, making it plain to Strokach that Semenyshyn had come up against a self-defense situation and got his due. The head of the UShPD did not believe the unit’s commander and requested information about the incident from his radio operator informants—Gorin and Evdokimov—who fully confirmed that the commissar had called misfortune down on his own head: “Semenyshyn, who was drunk, tried to shoot company commander Kovyanov, but only hit the latter’s automatic rifle. Partisan Kudrenko, who was present at the time, then shot and killed Semenyshyn.”109 We shall conclude this description of the psychological issues present in Soviet detachments with an excerpt from a report by an unknown Banderite from the Ternopil region. In light of previously cited documents, the overall picture does not appear distorted: Soldiers are refusing to go on watch, saying that “the commander is the same as us, so let him go on watch and clean weapons, as he requires, but I can shoot from a dirty rifle …” One of the partisans, upon getting drunk, said: “I don’t want to go fight, but my commander will have me shot.” Having said that in the commander’s presence, the latter responded: “Yes, I can have him shot, but my commander will just as willingly have me shot tomorrow.”110

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Conclusion: The Characteristics of Stalin’s Partisan War In assessing the characteristics of the Soviet partisan war, let us compare partisan activity to that of the Ukrainian Insurgent Army, and to a lesser extent, to the Home Army—Armia Krajowa.1 Ukrainians fought both in the ranks of the UPA and in UShPD units, but they fought differently. None of the distinctive features of Soviet partisan action in 1941–44 was a consequence of any one factor. Here a complex mix of interrelated features must therefore be mentioned. However, in order to minimize the number of repetitions, an explanation must be constructed using the pattern “one cause—one consequence.” In terms of the scope and brutality of terror against the civilian population, Stalin’s partisans deferred to their nationalist colleagues. The Banderites caused the deaths of many times more civilians than did Soviet Ukrainian partisans: the insurgents slaughtered Poles. The Polish Home Army also actively engaged in terror: its units killed a larger civilian population (of Ukrainians) than did Soviet partisans—at least within what is now south-east Poland, as well as Volyn and Galicia. The UPA and AK were nationalist formations, so their use of ethnic terror was more logical than it was for the communists—who, at least formally, were internationalists. The latter, in distinction from their colleagues, did however employ class terror. Stalin’s partisans could take pity on even a Nazi collaborator, if he was a poor peasant, while they would plunder and sometimes even kill well-to-do citizens, even if they had not committed any acts of hostility against the reds. Banderites in a similar situation judged people not only on a scale of political activity, but also on ancestry: with all other things equal, UPA fighters could take pity on a Ukrainian, even an easterner, but they would kill a Russian2 or a Jew. Red partisans distinguished themselves with outbreaks of mass terror against representatives of their own ethnic groups. The UPA did not massacre Ukrainian villages, and such actions on the part of the AK against Polish villages are unimaginable. Red Ukrainian partisans, on the

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254  •  Stalin’s Commandos other hand, often destroyed Ukrainian villages in Volyn—on occasion, along with the entire population. The key role of the NKVD as the principal organizer of the struggle behind the lines during the first year of the war gave Soviet partisan formations a certain repressive energy. The underlying influence of communist ideology on the minds of Soviet citizens may also be noted, particularly the ongoing repression between 1917 and 1941. At the same time, to this day, not a single occurrence has been uncovered in which the reds destroyed some “Nazi police” village in eastern or central Ukraine, although they did destroy “nationalistic” population centers in Western Ukraine that were alien to them. This is what distinguished them from Belarusian partisans, during whose punitive activities Belarusian “Nazi collaborationist” villages were readily turned into ashes.3 Strange as it may seem, in a Belarus full of partisan detachments, Soviet partisans were not entirely considered “friendlies.”4 This is what distinguished them from UShPD partisans, who were of the locals’ own flesh and blood, from the central and eastern oblasts of the Ukrainian SSR. In 1941–42, in the forests of Belarus, there was a large number of escaped prisoners of war and soldiers who found themselves surrounded; these men were in no way related to the “settled” population. In addition, the state of mind of Belarusians was more traditional than that of the Ukrainians. For that reason, in the Belarusian SSR, local detachments employed the principle of collective punishment more often than was done in the Ukrainian SSR. The scale of repressive actions by partisans sometimes harmed even the communist regime, including in Eastern Ukraine, since it helped the Germans attract peasants to their side.5 Moreover, in Volyn, according to Stepan Oleksenko, the head of the Kamianets-Podilsky Staff of the Partisan Movement, “often, partisans came to villages in Western Ukraine in a ‘by the numbers’ manner: ‘Oho! Nationalists, Bulba followers, Banderites— strike at them, crush them!’ … There were incidents where partisans burned down villages … Of course, such actions pushed the people away from us, closer to the nationalists, to ‘their own boys.’”6 Terror on an even larger scale was being brought to bear on the population by the Nazis, deliberately provoked by Stalin’s partisans, who had no desire to minimize the enemy’s repressions. In contrast, a common thread runs through OUN and UPA directives, ordering insurgent commanders to avoid carrying out operations near Ukrainian population centers. So as not to expose Polish populations to German terror, the AK generally adopted a “doctrine of restricted actions,” which led to a similarly limited result on the anti-German front.

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Conclusion: The Characteristics of Stalin’s Partisan War  •  255 There was—besides the Soviet system’s habitual disregard for human life—a desire on the part of command centers to drive a wedge between the occupation administration and the civilian population. In the words of the German historian Klaus Jochen Arnold, “during Operation Barbarossa, the Wehrmacht encountered an all-or-nothing partisan war that resulted in a more savage occupation policy.”7 Having provoked Nazi terror, the red partisans did not try to defend the civilian population in the occupied territories against repressions. In fact, command centers never issued such directives at all. The vast majority of Soviet partisan commanders were only interested in the number of blown-up trains, killed Germans, or the accuracy of intelligence information. Conversely, for the UPA, the defense of village inhabitants was a priority. A consistent indicator in this case was the existence of an OUN expanded network of “self-defense group detachments.” The US researcher Kenneth Slepyan correctly defined the term— originally coined cleverly by Stalin and which, through inertia, continues to be used to date—the Soviet partisan “movement”: “In other countries of occupied Europe, the Resistance had, from the beginning, developed more or less spontaneously and without significant formal institutional or state support. The opposite was true in the Soviet Union—from the very beginning, state institutions set about the business of creating, organizing, and leading partisans.”8 The thought should be completed: it is not two similar phenomena differing in form that are being discussed, but two different phenomena that give the illusion of being similar. The red partisans were not insurgents (rebels) but commandos (saboteurs, scouts, and terrorists). At the same time, the widespread notion of a commando does not really fit in with the picture of a baggy young peasant wearing a tattered sheepskin and cocked three-flap cap, and armed with a rusty rifle and two rounds of ammunition. But appearances are deceiving, and the level of military training (or, more likely, its absence) in this case was not a defining trait of the partisans, but the price paid for training huge numbers rather than focusing on quality. Naturally, the quantity and skill of red partisans contradict the spirit of special units, but the principle behind the creation of these formations and the aspects of their outfitting and operation indicates that, in terms of content, these were Soviet commandos. The difference between the two types of armed formations can already be seen in their names. Rebels appeared as a result of people’s dissatisfaction with the regime, and to a significant extent, they act per the direct— which is to say, immediate—interests and desires of the local population. Conversely, the special forces from the very start remain in the enemy’s rear

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256  •  Stalin’s Commandos during the retreat, and are even sent behind the front line by the uniformed government services to act in the interests of the latter. The difference between special forces and rebels is in no way defined by the extent to which either group has ties to the local population. The fact that Soviet special forces were ordered, in 1941–42, to act in the area of their prewar deployment, which was commonly the case, did not change their nature. Commando units may meet resistance from local residents, or conversely, enjoy their support; the population can be mobilized or may even volunteer to join the raiders, but this does not change the nature of the latter. They are carrying out the will of the army command, not paying any particular attention to the fate of the people who live next to them on a day-to-day basis. Not coincidentally, Kovpak and Saburov—and their partisans—always referred to themselves as “an army unit in the enemy’s rear” in discussions and internal documents. It may be said that those described as Stalin’s partisans in this book weren’t partisans at all. The word “partisan” comes from the French, meaning a follower of some political movement. Yet both the behind-the-line and direct command of Soviet formations had, by 1941, become stripped of an ideological bias. The majority of Soviet partisans became such not because of adherence to some political idea, but because they were ordered to. Even officers in the AK cared more for local Polish residents than Soviet emissaries did about any population at all. In Western Ukraine in 1943–44, a conflict arose in the AK between local officers and commanding generals who were communicating the wishes of the government-in-exile. Many local AK units wanted to protect Polish peasants from Banderite terror, but their leadership ordered them to prepare an uprising and facilitate the advance of the Red Army.9 There were many failures communicated between the UShPD and local commanders, but to this day not a single case is known where the commander of a detachment argued with Strokach over his efforts to protect peasants. Civilian suffering was compounded by the widespread employment of scorched-earth tactics by Soviet commandos. Neither the UPA nor the AK allowed themselves to so recklessly destroy economic assets. In a number of cases such destruction even harmed the regime itself. For example, blowing up the historical center of Kyiv horrified Kyiv residents as an act of vandalism, while in rural areas red actions were not always understood, even by their colleagues. In his diary, Mikhail Naumov wrote that the partisans of small detachments from a number of large units in the Zhytomyr area acted in a pointless manner: “They burned barracks with arms and

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Conclusion: The Characteristics of Stalin’s Partisan War  •  257 ammunition, a hospital, a maternity hospital, and a cultural center in the village of Podluby. They are burning what should be preserved …”10 At the head of Ukrainian partisan detachments and other staffs of the partisan movement were workers of the Soviet state apparatus who were directly or indirectly involved in the mass terror of 1917–41, and at the very least had been there for the destruction of churches and long-standing estates. Yet on 3 July 1941, Stalin’s call to destroy everything that stood or moved in the German rear rumbled across the entire country. This disregard for the fate of a peasantry—which had not exactly been the subject of benevolent regard by the powers that be in the USSR—was also expressed in the methods undertaken to provide foodstuffs to Soviet detachments. Banderites, in trying to obtain food and clothing for the UPA, established an orderly system of natural taxes within the territory under rebel control. And later, in 1945–47, via party members and sympathizers, the Banderites would find out what was located where, in what village, and in what house, so that taxes could be levied without angering the population. In the years of World War II, AK detachments strove to take initially only those products that were intended to be delivered to the Germans. In the words of historian Boris Sokolov, “It is in the partisan dispatches that you’ll read of how the local population in Western Belarus supported the Polish partisans … because they don’t rob, or rape, or kill, and always pay for taken food. At the same time, Soviet partisans rob, and rape, and kill, and never pay for food …”11 Methods of supplying Soviet detachments were illustrated by the words of partisan commander Petro Vershyhora, when he described the partisans of Ivan Shitov: “‘We’re the unit that takes everything in quick succession,’ ‘Auntie, open the cupboard. We’ve come on an operation.’”12 This led to the following practice, explained by Vershyhora in a spring 1944 official report to the UShPD: “The economic state of raions controlled by the UPA is more auspicious than in Soviet [partisan zones and] raions, and the population is better off and robbed less.”13 The framework of partisan formations was based around the Soviet party functionaries, as well as members of the nomenklatura, who in the accounts and opinion of Mikhail Voslenski were distinguished by their utter lack of thrift and lack of respect for work.14 The haphazard system of requisitions must be distinguished from robbery, although this is often difficult. The difference with the Banderites was so evident that it was even noticed by the Germans, who theoretically saw all partisans as a sort of amorphous, evil mass. An intelligence summary from the Abwehr station “Ukraine” located in the Zdolbuniv area stated that: “The UPA is fighting not only the Bolshevik army, but the German army as well. In distinction from the Bolshevik bands … their units are

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258  •  Stalin’s Commandos well disciplined. UPA detachments conduct themselves properly with the civilian population. Robbery is punishable by death.”15 Soviet partisan commanders and their behind-the-lines superiors knew that they would receive orders, medals, ranks, titles, postwar government positions, and pensions—not for their loyal treatment of civilians, but for blowing up trains and bridges and killing Germans. Among other things, this is why commanders turned a blind eye to brigandage among their subordinates, not to mention why they often took part in it themselves. In contrast, the Banderites put political goals ahead of military ones, and used propaganda and their personal behavior to influence people, so as to promote a national revolution. The UPA depended on the local population, not on supplies and leadership from the Center, and so the rebel commanders had to suppress brigandage by their subordinates. The AK, which had come up against competition from other Polish partisan organizations, strove to legitimize itself in the eyes of Poles through its crime-fighting. The occurrence of other disciplinary violations—drunkenness, promiscu­ ity, and sexual violence—was inherent among Soviet partisan formations as well. In the AK, the use of alcohol was generally under control, and in the OUN–UPA, intoxication was encountered in individual instances but not as a phenomenon, a fact which the nationalists employed in their propaganda.16 The Banderites struggled with moonshining and intoxication among civilians as well. With regard to sexual activities, the behavior of partisans and rebels also differed noticeably, although not as fundamentally. Incidents described in this book in the section on sexual promiscuity also occurred in the UPA and AK. In particular, UPA commander-in-chief Roman Shukhevych distinguished himself through his significant activity, including with regard to his own couriers, but these were exceptions. The “organizational orders” of the security service (SB) of the OUN after the war singly stressed the need for restraint: “Male Lieutenant-Colonels should not visit women on personal matters. If he is meeting with women on organizational matters, a witness must be present … A male who undermines the morale of a female will be punished by a reduction in position.”17 This was because the enemy could make use of sexual behavior to introduce or recruit a spy, hold a partner hostage, etc. Among red commanders, the presence of mistresses—sometimes several at the same time—was the norm. Rape committed against the Ukrainian population did not occur in the UPA, in contrast to Soviet detachments. To all of the previously cited differences, we may add one other small detail: Christians served in the AK and UPA, but not atheists, as was the case in Soviet detachments. Both traditional and official Christian ethics allow killing as an extreme measure, but Churches had developed an unequivocally adverse

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Conclusion: The Characteristics of Stalin’s Partisan War  •  259 attitude toward intoxication and depravity. Smoking was so widespread among the reds that tobacco was on the list of UShPD supplies. Among the Banderites, there was a complete prohibition on the use of tobacco. In addition to “external” disciplinary violations, Soviet partisan detach­ ments exhibited an exceptional number of internal conflicts. Mikhail Naumov considered the “backwardness of leadership” to be one reason for the problems: “All Ukrainian large partisan units and detachments were concentrated together, but acted separately. They squabble, don’t interact, lack discipline and consistency, and exhibit a lack of control and responsibility.”18 This was a consequence of their lack of principles, which led to a lack of cohesion. Stalin’s partisans publicly swore their love for “the leader of peoples,” but were not dedicated Stalinists or Marxists. The Nazis did not want to understand this. They described the characteristic hatred of the brazen, malicious, and arrogant invaders that prevailed among the partisans, combined with a loyalty to the Soviet superpower, as a manifestation of delirious Bolshevism. The Soviet partisan struggle was neither a broad movement of the masses, who rebelled in response to the actions of a hated regime, nor the initiative of a united group of politically kindred spirits. Partisan structures were created by order from above, functioned as per the orders of their leadership, and were at the end of war dissolved by order of “high-level comrades.” The administrative and command system was the essence of the Soviet partisan apparatus, beginning with Stalin down to the detachment commander and soldiers. For this reason, the activities of Soviet partisans, and even the set of partisan formations, cannot entirely be called a “partisan movement.” One does not call the staffing of a Red Army division, the massive creation of collective farms, or the institution of some people’s commissariats (ministries) a “movement,” despite the fact that in doing so, huge numbers of people moved within the boundaries of the USSR. In this regard, naming the various headquarters that led the partisan formations “the staffs of the partisan movement” was a clever propaganda move for Stalin’s functionaries. If we think about it, the name is an oxymoron. For, in reality, the TsShPD and UShPD were leadership bodies of Soviet special forces. Nor is it correct to describe the Soviet partisan struggle as a resistance. Detachments were formed before the arrival of the Germans—when there was nothing to resist. The majority of people joined the partisan detachments either directly through mobilization, or in response to life-threatening circumstances. Most importantly, in distinction from the UPA, the command staff of large partisan units was also manned using the principle of directive-

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260  •  Stalin’s Commandos based compulsion. The rank and file of Soviet detachments were, in general, assembled in a haphazard manner using whatever manpower happened to be available. In contrast, the backbone of the UPA were volunteers, specifically members of the OUN, a totalitarian party of radicals supporting Ukrainian independence. They had gone underground even before the war and engaged in terrorism and other life-threatening undertakings. The nationalists were, from the start, willing to die for an independent Ukraine, and, moreover, to kill for it as well. Having experienced pressure “from below,” and having felt the sharp rise of the population’s protest mood, the Banderites emerged from the underground. As Petro Vershyhora wrote to Tymofii Strokach on 27 February 1944: “Over the course of almost all of 1943, Volyn has been swept by an anti-German movement, a people’s rebellion against the Germans. The Nationalists led it …”19 The UPA command staff was composed of OUN members;20 the majority of future UPA officers joined the party even before the war. The rank and file did join the UPA primarily through compulsory mobilization. Moreover, the percentage of those forcibly taken into the UPA and the forest was apparently even higher than among Soviet partisans. Sensible villagers did not particularly want to raise their hand to stop a totalitarian, victorious red juggernaut. However, the nationalists selected conscripts through lower-level OUN structures, i.e. party cells in villages. This means that the staff of the Banderite “induction centers” had been personally acquainted with the conscripts for many years. Becoming part of a detachment, young peasants found themselves under the watchful guidance of their fanatical commanders and the ideological indoctrination of nationalist political information officers. Additional party monitoring of the insurgent army was carried out by Banderite counterintelligence— the OUN security service—whose leadership comprised nationalists with a solid party track record. It was specifically the bloody OUN discipline that prevented internecine conflicts in the UPA from assuming the character of a usual phenomenon. There were no compulsory mobilizations at all in the AK. Moreover, most of the rank and file went to fight in Polish nationalist formations as volunteers. Finding themselves in the enemy’s rear through the will of their leadership and fate, red commanders tried as best they could to provide themselves with comfortable conditions in which to perform missions, and turned a blind eye to the same ambitions on the part of their subordinates. Within the ranks of Soviet partisans, the most spirited life—and most miserable for the local population—was enjoyed by army intelligence

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Conclusion: The Characteristics of Stalin’s Partisan War  •  261 and state security groups, which had grown to the size of partisan detachments.21 This had a lot to do with the missions of these detachments, which placed a high priority on human (secret agents’) intelligence collection and individual terror, while the lion’s share of preparatory steps for individual terror attacks was carried out by that same group of agents. The most valuable intelligence data could be provided by detachments whose immediate mission was to conduct intelligence operations.22 If those subordinate to staffs of the partisan movement were duty bound to always be setting fire to or blowing up things and shooting people, then their colleagues from the other two departments considered such activity counterintuitive, since it detracted from the performance of the primary mission and attracted the unfriendly attention of the invaders. All of this fomented idleness, which led to “everyday dissolution.” Moreover, while the core of the special groups were people who had been selected behind the front line and were accustomed to order, the volunteers accepted in detachments, in the unflattering words of an obscure Banderite member of the underground, were “Local groups—riff-raff with a mission to provide the detachment with food and to engage in intelligence and security activities. And it is these last who burn villages, rob, and kill.”23 Internal relations in all large Soviet partisan units—squabbles, fights, coarse language, beatings, and contrariness amounting to petty tyranny on the part of many commanders and commissars—were highlighted even more by certain parallels. Associations with detachments did not arise to the obsessiveness associated with fiery guerrilleros, nor with the cemented hierarchical and institutional notions (customs) of military units. A different type of armed organization comes to mind—criminal gangs that have been assigned diversionary or intelligence-gathering missions at a given time by bosses, consistent with the situation. And it is not a “label” we are talking about here, but specifically an essential psychological characteristic of these groups. At the “grass roots” level of the Stalinist machine, the same rules and regulations were replicated as existed at the very top of the pyramid built by the “Kremlin Highlander.” The latest research, for example, convincingly demonstrates the existence of fundamental differences between Lenin and Hitler, on the one hand, and Stalin, on the other. The English writer H. G. Wells accurately called Lenin “the Dreamer in the Kremlin.” Adolf Hitler was the same kind of visionary from the Reich Chancellery. Yet for the “leader of the peoples” and his apparatus, on the contrary, ideology did not play an internal role.24 Stalin’s Politburo was a gang of cold-blooded, cynical, and calculating functionaries whose only focus was the preservation, enhancement, and unlimited extension of their own power, which was for them an end in itself.

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262  •  Stalin’s Commandos Stalin generally had a good perception of reality, but refracted it through the prism of his own specific personality. It is significant that even as the head of a huge country, the “best friend of athletes” would use criminal slang at public appearances.25 Another important question is this: Did the Soviet leadership value the lives of their subordinates and operators? At first glance, the Stalinist partisan war was, in this case, something extraordinary. In 1941–42, people who had no understanding of behindthe-lines warfare left large numbers of unprepared and outrageously unequipped partisans behind during the retreat, or dropped them into the German rear (usually with no idea where they would end up). These fighters did not understand their own missions or how to accomplish them. In 1943–44, the UShPD began to act more professionally, but the dropping of partisans onto bare steppe areas, or into territory controlled by the Romanians, or into Banderite-controlled Galicia—to virtually certain death—continued. Such treatment of subordinates was not usually allowed even among Banderite commanders, who exhibited a high level of sacrificial willingness. However, if we take a broader historical perspective, then it turns out that, in general, the Polish nationalists and the ultra-right-wing Banderite radicals had as poor an appreciation for the life of their partisans as that of the Stalinist organizers of behind-the-line warfare. In 1945, despite the obvious futility of military opposition to the USSR—made worse by relatively weak resistance to communism in most countries of Central and Eastern Europe—the OUN–UPA leadership ordered the rebels and members of the underground to continue their armed struggle with the Soviets, which ended in defeat. The propaganda effort from the UPA in 1945–49 was also not decisive in the recent collapse of the system in 1991. In the AK, the “precision” of actions in 1942–43 was canceled out by Operation “Storm” (Burza), a series of revolts against the Wehrmacht just before the arrival of the Red Army, which cost the Poles a great deal of spilled blood. As a way of countering the communists, this AK strategy was not only disastrous, but counterproductive as well. According to the designs of the politicians and generals planning “Storm,” the rebels were to greet the Bolsheviks not as the passive emancipated, but as the masters of Poland. As a result, the anti-Soviet, nationalistic Polish underground suffered huge losses from the Germans during “Storm,” and exposed itself to the NKVD and NKGB, who did not waste the golden opportunity to smash quickly the AK and associated structures. During discussions with the AK in 1943–44, Polish ultra-right-wing representatives from NSZ expressed the

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Conclusion: The Characteristics of Stalin’s Partisan War  •  263 opinion that the plan being prepared was absurd and adventurist. However, the government-in-exile gave the order to commence “Storm,” the AK generals conveyed it “through channels,” and, apart from rare exceptions, local commanders carried it out. It is not coincidental that the most wellknown component of “Storm,” which resulted in the destruction of the Polish capital, was assessed harshly in August 1944 by General Wladyslaw Anders, commander of one of the Polish divisions on the Western Front, who said: “Proclamation of an uprising in Warsaw … was not only foolish, but clearly a crime.”26 In the opinion of the organizers, who were in London, “Storm” was supposed to prevent Stalin from establishing power in Poland, but, on the contrary, it greatly facilitated the installation of a real concrete system of socialism. Thus, in comparison with the nationalist war, communist partisan actions were relatively successful from the perspective of a struggle against invaders—primarily in terms of sabotaging communications, but also destroying economic facilities, battles with police forces, and cooperation with the advancing Red Army. Soviet partisans of Ukraine inflicted more damage on the Nazis than the UPA and the AK put together. This happened not only due to the general concept of the Soviet partisan war—the infliction of the greatest loss to the enemy through subversion, regardless of circumstances—but also due to the fact that in 1942–44, red partisans had a well-tuned system for receiving aid from behind the front line, i.e. weapons, ammunition, medical supplies, equipment, and men. Nor can one ignore the moral support that the Soviet regime provided to the red partisans and its own giant Red Army. The AK received insignificant amounts of external aid, while the UPA received nothing at all in their fight against the Germans. News of Red Army victories were received by Polish (and especially Ukrainian) nationalists not with enthusiasm, but with caution. However, despite these circumstances, the AK and the UPA grew in the struggle with the Nazis. The AK performed effective intelligence work; the UPA proved its mettle in the struggle against the Nazi occupation administration and local police forces. On 5 June 1943, Schöne, general commissar for Volyn and Podillia, made a statement to such effect at an emergency meeting with Alfred Rosenberg: “Ukrainian nationalists create more complications for us than do the Bolshevik gangs.”27 And this despite the fact that in 1943 the anti-Nazi struggle was not a Banderite priority. At the same time, Ukrainian partisans, compared to partisans in Belarus and (to some extent) Russia, were more mobile, while the diversionary activities of UShPD subordinates were distinguished by a great deal of common sense and success. For example, in June 1943, there were onesixth as many Ukrainian partisans as there were Russian and Belarusian

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264  •  Stalin’s Commandos partisans combined. At the same time, of the 172 individuals awarded the title of Hero of the Soviet Union for participation in the USSR partisan war, 55 (or about one-third) were awarded for actions within Ukraine.28 Thus, considering the failures of communist partisan formations in 1941–42 and the resources that were spent by the Soviets to organize actions behind the front lines during the entire war, it cannot be concluded that the collocation “Stalin’s partisan war” is a synonym for the collocation “effective partisan war,” even if we keep in mind the strictly military effect of partisan actions. Researcher John Armstrong has also noted the mismatch between the significant manpower and resources committed in the enemy’s rear by Soviet leadership and the decidedly limited military results of the activities of Soviet irregular formations. If we do not concentrate exclusively on the operational component of partisan activities, then it is relevant to note that contemporary historians Volodimir Lozytsky and Anatolii Kentii have correctly called Soviet commando activities in the Wehrmacht rear “a war without quarter or mercy.” And they are not alone in their assessment. Having studied the Soviet partisan war on the local level, Alexander Brakel drew a conclusion with which one can fully agree: “Victory over the Germans was a goal to which Soviet leadership subordinated everything else, including the survival of its own population.”29 It must be clarified: not just the defeat of the Germans, but the victory of the Soviet system. At the same time, researcher Viacheslav Boiarsky, in assessing the behindthe-front-line struggle of the regime, reasonably called the history of the Soviet partisan war a “history of missed opportunities.” In other words— and this in part was shown by the experience of the AK and UPA—there were other ways to fight the invader, and other ways to defeat him. And it is fully explainable why Soviet partisan detachments in Ukraine exhibited the characteristics described in this book: they were a manifestation of Stalinism at war.

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Notes Introduction 1 Diary of Erich Bach-Zelewskii, the Chief of Partisan-fighting Unit (Bundesarhiv, Berlin (hereafter: BAB) R 20/45b. Bl. 77). 2 The reviews of the Polish edition of this work: Leszek Molendowski, 11 February 2011: www.konflikty.pl/a,2864,Ksiazki,Aleksandr_ Gogun_.html; Maciek, 17 June 2011: http://przezhistorie.pl/ index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=86:aleksa ndr-gogun-partyzanci-stalina-na-ukrainie-nieznane-dziaania-19411944&catid=28:xx-w-recenzje&Itemid=45; March 2011: http:// komandos.net.pl/lektury/03-11/snajper.pdf. 3 N. Petrov, “Sovetskie organy gosbezopasnosti I organizatsiia diversionnoterroristicheskogo napravleniia v gody voiny. 1941–45”, Istoricheskie chteniia na Lubianke, 2008 (Moscow, 2009), 99–123. 4 Erich Hesse, Der sowjetrussische Partisanenkrieg 1941 bis 1944 im Spiegel deutscher Kampfanweisungen und Befehle (Göttingen; Zürich; Frankfurt, 1969); John A. Armstrong, Soviet Partisans in World War II (Madison, 1964). 5 A. S. Chaikovs′kyi, Nevidoma viina: Partyzans′kyi rukh v Ukraïni, 1941– 1944 rr.; Movoiu dokumentiv, ochyma istoryka (Kyiv, 1994); B. V. Sokolov, Okkupatsiia: Pravda i mify (Moscow, 2002); V. I. Boiarskii, Partizany i armiia: Istoriia uteriannykh vozmozhnostei, ed. A. E. Taras (Minsk; Moscow, 2003). 6 See Partizanskoe dvizhenie (Po opytu Velikoi Otechestvennoi voiny 1941–1945 gg.) (Moscow, 2001); Aleksei Popov, NKVD i partizanskoe dvizhenie (Moscow, 2003); idem, Deiatel′nost′ organov Gosbezopasnosti SSSR na okkupirovannoi sovetskoi territorii v gody Velikoi Otechestvennoi voiny (Moscow, 2004). 7 A. Kentii and V. Lozyts′kyi, Viina bez poshchady i myloserdia: Partyzans′kyi rukh u tylu vermakhta v Ukraïni (1941–1944) (Kyiv, 2005). 8 Ibid., 23. 9 Kenneth Slepyan, Stalin’s Guerrillas: Soviet Partisans in World War II (Lawrence, KA, 2006). 10 I. P. Shcherov, Partizany: organizatsiia, metody i posledstviia bor′by (1941– 1945) (Smolensk, 2006).

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266  •  Stalin’s Commandos 11 Bogdan Musiał, Sowjetische Partisanen: Mythos und Wirklichkeit (Paderborn, 2009), 358. 12 O. Iu. Plenkov, Tretii Reikh: Voina: do kriticheskoi cherty (St Petersburg, 2005), 193. 13 Tsentral′nyi Derzhavnyi Arkhiv Hromads′kykh Orhanizatsii Ukraïny (Central State Archive of Civic Organizations of Ukraine; hereafter: TsDAHO), f. 66, op. 1, spr. 42, ark. 80. 14 Ivan Bilas, Represyvno-karal′na systema v Ukraïni, 1917–1953: Suspil′nopolitychnyi ta istoryko-pravovyi analiz, 2 vols. (Kyiv, 1994); Organy Gosudarstvennoi bezopoasnosti v Velikoi Otechestvennoi voine, vols. 2–3 (Moscow, 2000–03). Unfortunately, both of these works violate the accepted standards governing the publication of archival documents. See also “Partizanskoe dvizhenie v gody Velikoi Otechestvennoi voiny 1941–1945 gg.: dokumenty i materialy”, Russkii arkhiv: Velikaia Otechestvennaia, vol. 20 (9) (Moscow, 1999); Ukraïna v Druhii Svitovii viini u dokumentakh: Zbirnyk nimets′kykh arkhivnykh materialiv, comp. V. M. Kosyk, 4 vols. (Lviv, 1997–2000). For a critique of Kosyk’s work, see S. V. Kul′chyts′kyi, “Introduction”, Orhanizatsiia ukraïns′kykh natsionalistiv i Ukraïns′ka povstans′ka armiia: Istorychni narysy (Kyiv, 2005), 10; V. Serhiichuk, OUN-UPA v roky viiny: Novi dokumenty i materialy (Kyiv, 1996); idem, Desiat′ buremnykh lit: Zakhidnoukraïns′ki zemli u 1944–1953 rr.; Novi dokumenty i materialy (Kyiv, 1998); idem, Radians′ki partyzany proty OUN-UPA (Kyiv, 2000); idem, Novitnia katorha: Viis′kovopoloneni ta internovani Druhoï svitovoï v URSR (Kyiv, 2001); idem, Poliaky na Volyni u roky Druhoï svitovoï viiny: Dokumenty z ukraïns′kykh arkhiviv i pol′s′ki publikatsiï (Kyiv, 2003); idem, Ukraïns′kyi zdvyh: Prykarpattia, 1939–1955 (Kyiv, 2005). The following Ukrainianand Polish-language collections were published in conformity with all scholarly standards: Litopys Ukraïns′koï Povstans′koï Armiï, vol. 2: Volyn′ i Polissia: UPA ta zapillia 1943–1944: Dokumenty i materialy, comp. O. Vovk and I. Pavlenko (Kyiv; Toronto, 1999); Litopys Ukraïns′koï Povstans′koï Armiï, Borot′ba proty UPA i natsionalistychnoho pidpillia: informatsiini dokumenty TsK(b)U, obkomiv partiï, NKVS-MVS, MDBKDB, 1943–1959, n.s., vol. 4, bk. 1, 1943–1945 (Kyiv; Toronto, 2002); Armia Krajowa w dokumentach, 1939–1945, vols. 2–3 (Wroclaw; Warsaw; Cracow, 1990). See also Okupacja i ruch oporu w dzienniku Hansa Franka, 1939–1945, comp. and ed. Lucjan Dobroszyn´ski et al., vol. 2 (Warsaw, 1979). 15 See the memoirs that were published during the lifetime of author Il′ia Starinov, Zapiski diversanta (Moscow, 1997); idem, Miny zamedlennogo deistviia (Moscow, 1999). Unfortunately, a number of memoirs were published after the deaths of their authors: P. A. Sudoplatov, Raznye dni tainoi voiny i diplomatii: 1941 god (Moscow, 2001); V. P. Il′in, Partizany

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Notes  •  267 ne sdaiutsia! Zhizn′ i smert′ za liniei fronta (Moscow, 2007); V. Nikol′skii, GRU v gody Velikoi Otechestvennoi voiny (Moscow, 2006); idem, Akvarium-2 (Moscow, 1997). The works of “Polish Soviet” memoiristic literature are even more reliable. See, for example, Przez uroczyska Polesia i Wołynia: wspomnienia polaków uczestników radzieckiego ruchu partyzanckiego, ed. Zofia Dróz˙dz˙-Satanowska (Warsaw, 1962); Mikołaj Kunicki, Pamie˛tnik “Muchy” (Warsaw, 1967). 16 BAB; Bundesarchiv-Militärarchiv (hereafter: BA-MA). The military archive is a branch of the Federal Archive of Germany. In a number of cases, letters stored in files in these two branches of a single archive are not numbered. In citing such documents, I indicate only the file number. 17 TsDAHO; Tsentral′nyi derzhavnyi arkhiv vyshchykh orhaniv vlady ta upravlinnia Ukraïny (Central State Archive of the Highest Organs of Government and Administration of Ukraine; hereafter: TsDAVO); Haluzevyi derzhavnyi arkhiv Sluzhby bezpeky Ukraïny (Branch State Archive of the Security Service of Ukraine; hereafter: HDA SBU). 18 Archiwum Akt Nowych (hereafter: AAN). 19 The Archive of US Holocaust Memorial Museum (USHMM), National Archives and Records Administration of the USA (NARA). 20 Yad Vashem Archive. 21 Tsentral′nyi arkhiv ministerstva oborony RF (Central Archive of the Minister of Defense of the RF; hereafter: TsAMO); Rossiiskii gosudarstvennyi voennyi arkhiv (Russian State Military Arvchive; hereafter: RGVA); Rossiiskii gosudarstvennyi arkhiv sotsial′nopoliticheskii istorii; hereafter: RGASPI); Gosudarstvennyi arkhiv Rossiiskoi Federatsii; hereafter: GARF). Tsentral′nyi arkhiv Federal’noi sluzhby bezopasnosti Rossiiskoi Federatsii (Central Archive of the Federal Secret Service of the RF; hereafter: TsA FSB). 22 The notes to this English-language edition indicate only the archival reference. In the text, abridgments in a document are indicated by ellipses. As much as possible the published materials have been brought in line with the grammatical norms of the English language without harming the style of the original. Errors have been corrected silently. Deciphered abbreviations and minor authorial semantic additions, both in the footnotes and the text, appear within square brackets without the author’s initials. More important explanatory authorial annotations appear within parentheses, with the author’s initials. Extensive abridgments in the text of a document are indicated by ellipses within parentheses; minor abridgements—by ordinary ellipses. 23 T. Bul′ba-Borovets′, Armiia bez derzhavy: Slava i trahediia ukraïns′koho povstans′koho rukhu; Spohady (Kyiv; Toronto; New York, 1996), 54.

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268  •  Stalin’s Commandos 24 O. A. Gorlanov and A. B. Roginskii, “Ob arestakh v zapadnykh oblastiakh Belorussii i Ukrainy v 1939–1941 gg.”, in Repressii protiv poliakov i pol′skikh grazhdan, vol. 1, Istoricheskie vypuski “Memoriala” (Moscow, 1997), 77–113. 25 M. Kheifets, Izbrannoe: v 3-kh tomakh, vol. 3, Ukrainskie siluety (Kharkiv, 2000); idem, Voennoplennyi sekretar′: povest′ o Paruire Airikiane (London, 1985), 139. 26 These estimates based on the following works: Ukraïna v 20-ti–na pochatku 90-kh rokiv XX stolittia: Korotkyi demohrafichnyi ohliad (Kyiv, 1992); V. I. Naulko, Etnichnyi sklad naselennia Ukraïns′koï RSR: Statystykokartohrafichne doslidzhennia (Kyiv, 1965); S. Chornyi, Natsional′nyi sklad naselennia Ukraïny v XX storichchi: Dovidnyk (Kyiv, 2001), passim. 27 Volodymyr Kubiiovych [Kubijovyč], Naukovi pratsi, vol. 1, ed. O. Shablii (Paris; Lviv, 1996), 73. 28 BAB, R 6/70, Bl. 108. 29 BAB, R 6/302, Bl. 105. 30 TsDAHO, f. 1, op. 22, spr. 10, ark. 5. 31 HDA SBU, f. 60, spr. 83512, t. 1, ark. 10–11, ark. 58 ta zv. 32 HDA SBU, f. 16, op. 2 (1948), spr. 4, ark. 1–3 zv. 33 V. Kubiiovych, Memuary; Rozdumy; Vybrani lysty, vol. 2, comp. O. Shablii (Paris; Lviv, 2000), 107. 34 BAB, R 6/244, Bl. 52 f. 35 TsDAHO, f. 63, op. 1, spr. 4, ark. 141. 36 A play on words: In German the adjective “red” also refers to red hair. Thus, the nickname “Erich the Red,” a description of Koch’s left-leaning views, echoed the nickname of the legendary Viking leader known as Erich the Red.

Chapter One 1 TsDAHO, f. 62, op. 1, spr. 1330, ark. 78–79. 2 TsDAHO, f. 62, op. 1, spr. 1, ark. 6. 3 Ukraïna partyzans′ka: Partyzans′ki formuvannia ta orhany kerivnytstva nymy (1941–1945 rr.): Naukovo-dovidne vydannia, comp. O. V. Bazhan, A. V. Kentii, V. S. Lozyts′kyi, et al. (Kyiv, 2001), 9. 4 OSNAZ: Ot Brigady osobogo naznacheniia k “Vympeliu”, 1941–1981 gg. (Moscow, 2001), 14–15. 5 Partizanskoe dvizhenie, 101–2. 6 Boiarskii, Partizany i armiia, 83. 7 GARF, f. 9478, op. 1, d. 277, l. 46. This document is stored in a folder of denunciations forwarded to the leadership of the NKVD USSR. 8 TsDAHO, f. 1, op. 22, spr. 8, ark. 33.

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Notes  •  269 9 TsDAHO, f. 62, op. 9, spr. 3, ark. 14–15, 18. 10 Karel C. Berkhoff, Harvest of Despair: Life and Death under Nazi Rule (Cambridge, MA, 2004), 275. 11 TsDAHO, f. 166, op. 2, spr. 350, ark. 11–12. 12 V. Kosyk, Ukraïna i Nimechchyna u Druhii svitovii viini, ed. Oleh Romaniv, trans. Roman Osadchuk (Paris; New York; Lviv, 1993), 253. 13 Partizanskoe dvizhenie, 114–15. 14 HDA SBU, f. 16, op. 35, t. 2, ark. 111. 15 TsDAHO, f. 62, op. 1, spr. 40, ark. 43. 16 Partizanskoe dvizhenie, 242–43. 17 Ukraïna partyzans′ka, 38–39. 18 RGASPI, f. 69, op. 1, d. 10, l. 69. 19 Ukraïna partyzans′ka, 40. 20 Starinov, Miny zamedlennogo deistviia, 129–30, 140–41. 21 TsDAHO, f. 62, op. 5, spr. 107, ark. 73. 22 Ibid., ark. 64–69. 23 Bilas, Represyvno-karal′na systema v Ukraïni, 2:410; TsDAHO, f. 1, op. 22, spr. 62, ark. 60. 24 Kentii and Lozyts′kyi, Viina bez poshchady, 280–81. 25 Ibid., 106–10. 26 Ibid., 112. 27 See Ukraïna partyzans′ka, 47–49; Kentii and Lozyts′kyi, Viina bez poshchady, 106–18. 28 Borot′ba proty UPA i natsionalistychnoho pidpillia: dyrektyvni dokumenty TsK Kompartiï Ukraïny 1943–1959, vol. 3, Litopys Ukraïns′koï Povstans′koï Armiï, n.s., ed. Pavlo Sokhan′, Petro Potichnyi [Peter J. Potichnyj], et al. (Kyiv; Toronto, 2001), 89. 29 OSNAZ, 46–47. 30 TsDAHO, f. 70, op. 1, spr. 11, ark. 1–28. 31 P. P. Vershigora, Liudi s chistoi sovestiu (Moscow, 1946), located at http:// militera.lib.ru/memo/russian/vershigora/17.html. 32 TsDAHO, f. 62, op. 1, spr. 1330, ark. 15. 33 P. A. Sudoplatov, Spetsoperatsii: Lubianka i Kreml′ (1930–1950 gody) (Moscow, 1997), 22–47. 34 A. I. Zevelev, F. L. Kurlat, and A. S. Kozitskii, Nenavist′, spresovannaia v tol (Moscow, 1991), 278. 35 TsDAHO, f. 166, op. 3, spr. 374, ark. 3. 36 K. M. Aleksandrov, Russkie soldaty Vermakhta (Moscow, 2005), 215–18. 37 V. Dziubak, “Bul′bivtsi (‘persha UPA’)”, in Orhanizatsiia ukraïns′kykh natsionalistiv i Ukraïns′ka povstans′ka armiia (Kyiv, 2005), passim. 38 TsDAHO, f. 57, op. 4, spr. 201, ark. 179–80. 39 Sokolov, Okkupatsiia; also located at http://militera.lib.ru/research/ sokolov3/02.html.

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270  •  Stalin’s Commandos 40 Zevelev, Kurlat, and Kozitskii, Nenavist′, 278–79. 41 See the section on the cadres of the occupation apparatus in Alexander Dallin, Deutsche Herrschaft in Russland, 1941–1945; eine Studie über Besatzungspolitik, 14th edn (Düsseldorf, 1958). 42 Z arkhiviv VUChK-GPU-NVKD-KGB, nos. 1–2 (1995), 15–28. 43 Ibid. 44 Z arkhiviv VUChK-GPU-NKVD-KGB, no. 1 (2000), doc no. 48. 45 Ibid., doc. no. 62. 46 Ibid. 47 Ibid., doc. no. 70. 48 D. V. Viedienieiev and H. S. Bystrukhin, Mech i tryzub: Rozvidka i kontrrozvidka rukhu ukraïns′kykh natsionalistiv ta UPA, 1920–1945 (Kyiv, 2006), 181–82. 49 TsDAHO, f. 57, op. 4, spr. 201, ark. 3–14. 50 Z arkhiviv VUChK -GPU-NKVD-KGB, no. 1 (2000), doc. no. 47. 51 HDA SBU, f. 60, op. 1, spr. 86751, t. 46, ark. 43. 52 “Razvedka SSSR v gody Velikoi otechestvennoi voiny”, located at www. agentura.ru/culture007/history/ww2/ussr/razvedka. 53 Prikaz NKO (Stalina) o reorganizatsii GRU GSh KA, no. 00222, 23 October 1942 g. See “Prikazy narodnogo komissara oborony SSSR, 22 June 1941 g.–1942 g.”, in Russkii arkhiv:Velikaia Otechestvennaia, vol. 13 (Moscow, 1997), doc. no. 280, p. 348. 54 Nikol′skii, GRU v gody Velikoi Otechestvennoi voiny, 119. 55 Ibid., 120–21. 56 A. Kolpakidi and D. Prokhorov, Imperiia GRU: Ocherki istorii rossiiskoi voennoi razvedki (Moscow, 1999). Also found at: www.agentura.ru/dossier/ russia/gru/imperia/voyna. See also A. G. Pavlov, “Voennaia razvedka SSSR v 1941–1945 gg.”, Novaia i noveishaia istoriia, no. 2 (1995). 57 Kolpakidi and Prokhorov, Imperiia GRU. 58 RGVA, f. 40973, op. 1, d. 28, l. 22. Cited in Aleksei Iu. Popov, Diversanty Stalina: deiatel′nost′ organov Gosbezopasnosti na okkupirovannoi sovetskoi territorii v gody Velikoi Otechestvennoi voiny (Moscow, 2004), 178. 59 TsDAHO. f. 62, op. 6, spr. 10, ark. 1. 60 Vid Polissia do Karpat: Karpats′kyi reid Sums′koho partyzans′koho z”iednannia pid komanduvanniam S. A. Kovpaka (cherven′–veresen′ 1943 r.): ochyma uchasnykiv, movoiu dokumentiv, comp. A. V. Kentii and V. S. Lozyts′kyi (Kyiv, 2005), 53. 61 “Prikazy narodnogo komissara oborony SSSR”, doc. no. 179, p. 282. 62 TsDAHO, f. 62, op. 1, spr. 40, ark. 52. 63 Kentii and Lozyts′kyi, Viina bez poshchady, 273. 64 TsDAHO, f. 62, op. 1, spr. 1271, ark. 112. 65 Ibid., spr. 1330, ark. 16.

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Notes  •  271 66 Mieczysław Juchniewicz, Na Wschód od Bugu: Polacy w walce antyhitlerowskiej na ziemiach ZSRR 1941–1945 (Warsaw, 1985), 30–40. 67 TsDAHO, f. 166, op. 3, spr. 374, ark. 2. 68 Armstrong, Soviet Partisans, 137.

Chapter Two 1 B.V. Sokolov, Tainy Vtoroi mirovoi (Moscow, 2001), 172. 2 TsDAHO, f. 66, op. 1, spr. 42, ark. 75–76. 3 TsDAHO, f. 1, op. 22, spr. 63, ark. 11–12. 4 GARF, f. 9478, op 1, d. 277, l. 31. 5 Popov, Diversanty Stalina, 55. 6 BAB, R 58/216, Bl. 95 f. 7 Nikol′skii, GRU v gody Velikoi Otechestvennoi voiny, 92. 8 TsDAHO, f. 1, op. 22, spr. 8, ark. 22–23, 25. 9 BAB, R 58/217, Bl. 21. 10 BAB, R 58/218, Bl. 3. 11 TsDAHO, f. 94, op 1, spr. 9, ark. 2. 12 TsDAHO, f. 57, op. 4, spr. 189, ark. 121. 13 TsDAHO, f. 62, op. 1, spr. 1, ark. 1. 14 TsDAHO, f. 1, op. 22, spr. 63, ark. 172–75. 15 BA-MA, RH 26–213/6, Bl. 6–7. 16 TsDAHO, f. 1, op. 22, spr. 62, ark. 40–41. 17 BA-MA, RH 26–213/6, Bl. 6. 18 TsDAHO, f. 1, op. 22, spr. 63, ark. 76. 19 NARA. Records of the US Nuremberg War Crimes Trial. Microcopy no. T-1119. Translation of doc. NOKW-2872, p. 279. 20 TsDAHO, f. 62, op. 1, spr. 1, ark. 6–7. 21 BAB, R 58/217, Bl. 21 f. 22 BAB, NS 19, 1671, Bl. 10 f. 23 Organy Gosudarstvennoi bezopasnosti SSSR, vol. 3, bk. 1, 409–10. 24 V. Glebov, Voina bez pravil: Predannyi rezident (Moscow, 2005), 54–56. 25 Starionov, Miny zamedlennogo deistviia, 133. 26 Z arkhiviv VUChK-GPU-NKVD-KGB, no. 1 (2000), 79–80. 27 M. S. Voslenskii, Nomenklatura: Gospodstvuiushchii klass Sovetskogo Soiuza (Moscow, 1991), 456–57. 28 Partizanskoe dvizhenie v gody Velikoi Otechestvennoi voiny, 19. 29 Ukraïna partyzans′ka, 265. 30 TsDAHO, f. 1, op. 22, spr. 63, ark. 24. 31 TsAMO, f. 32, op. 11309, d. 137, l. 464–65. 32 TsDAHO, f. 1, op. 22, spr. 63, ark. 24–25.

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272  •  Stalin’s Commandos 33 Ibid., ark. 25. 34 Starinov, Miny zamedlennogo deistviia, 145. 35 BAB, R 58/ 214–23, 697, passim. 36 These figures are based on: GARF, f. 9478, op. 1, d. 277, l. 193. 37 GARF, f. 9478, op. 1, d. 277, l. 31. 38 Klaus Jochen Arnold, Die Wehrmacht und die Besatzungspolitik in den besetzen Gebieten der Sowjetunion: Kriegführung und Radikalisierung im “Unternehmen Barbarossa” (Berlin, 2005), 152. 39 A. Gratsiozi [Andrea Graziosi], Velikaia krest′ianskaia voina v SSSR: Bol′sheviki i krest′iane, 1917–1933 (Moscow, 2001), 52–53. 40 TsDAHO, f. 57, op. 4, spr. 189, ark. 121. 41 These figures are based on: TsDAHO, f. 1, op. 22, spr. 62, ark. 7, 14 and TsDAHO, f. 1, op. 23, spr. 36, ark. 12–14. 42 Ukraïna partyzans′ka, 264. 43 TsDAHO, f. 62, op. 1, spr. 1, ark. 35. 44 Ukraïna partyzans′ka, 264. 45 TsDAHO, f. 1, op. 22, spr. 22, ark. 32–37. 46 See BA-MA, RH 22/204. Bl. 194 Rückseite and BA-MA, RH 22/98. Bl. 369 f. 47 TsDAHO, f. 62, op. 1, spr. 1, ark. 36. 48 BAB, NS 19/2566, Bl. 79. 49 BAB, NS 19/2605, Bl. 41 f. 50 TsDAHO, f. 62, op. 1, spr. 1, ark. 45. 51 BA-MA, RH 22/66, Bl. 2. 52 TsDAHO, f. 62, op. 1, spr. 1, ark. 21. 53 BA-MA, RH 22/60, Bl. 84. 54 Hesse, Der sowjetrussische Partisanenkrieg, 177–78. 55 Kentii and Lozyts′kyi, Viina bez poshchady, 120. 56 Ukraïna partyzans′ka, 265. 57 RGASPI, f. 69, op. 1, d. 1027, l. 84. 58 TsDAHO, f. 62, op 1, spr. 1, ark. 38. 59 Ibid., ark. 36–37. 60 Ibid., ark. 34. 61 Ukraïna partyzans′ka, 266. 62 BAB, R 58/222, Bl. 263. 63 TsDAHO, f. 65, op. 1, spr. 105, ark. 16 zv. 64 Kentii and Lozyts′kyi, Viina bez poshchady, 129. 65 Ibid. 66 Ibid. 67 BAB, NS 19/2605, Bl. 80. 68 Bilas, Represyvno-karal′na systema v Ukraïni, 2:357. 69 BAB, R 6/378, Bl. 15. 70 BAB, R 6/492, Bl. 5.

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Notes  •  273 71 TsDAHO, f. 67, op. 1, spr. 11, ark. 47. 72 TsDAHO, f. 1, op. 22, spr. 67, ark. 107. 73 BA-MA, RW 31/250, Bl. 26. 74 BA-MA, RH 22/134, Bl. 3. 75 Ukraïna v Druhii svitovii viini, 3:152. 76 TsDAHO, f. 62, op. 1, spr. 1, ark. 48. 77 TsDAHO, f. 64, op. 1, spr. 59, ark. 44. 78 TsDAHO, f. 62, op. 1, spr. 1, ark. 35; Tsentral′nyi derzhavnyi kinofotofonoarkhiv Ukraïny (hereinafter TsDKFFA), arch. no. 2057. 79 BAB, R 58/224, Bl. 38 f. This document misidentifies the insurgents led by Taras Bulba-Borovets as OUN(B) insurgents. 80 BAB, NS 19/1433, Bl. 148. 81 TsDAHO, f. 62, op. 1, spr. 1, ark. 52. 82 Ibid., ark. 60. 83 AAN, 228/17-8, k. 55–56. 84 TsDAHO, f. 1, op. 22, spr. 8, ark. 3. 85 BA-MA, RH 22/133, Bl. 4. 86 BAB, R 20/45b, Bl. 81. 87 TsDAHO, f. 67, op. 1, spr. 11, ark. 46. 88 Count according to RGASPI, f. 69, op. 1, d. 25, l. 123. 89 TsDAHO, f. 62, op. 1, spr. 52, ark. 23. 90 Okupacja i ruch oporu, vol. 1, passim. 91 Vid Polissia do Karpat, 226. 92 TsDAHO, f. 1, op. 22, spr. 50, ark. 58. 93 Okupacja i ruch oporu, vol. 2, 208–9. 94 BAB, NS 19/1433, Bl. 126. 95 Vid Polissia do Karpat, 165. 96 TsDAVO, f. 3959, op. 2, spr. 136, ark. 17. 97 Vid Polissia do Karpat, 25. 98 AAN, 203/XV-7, k. 1–5. 99 Vid Polissia do Karpat, 77. 100 Interview with Vasyl Yermolenko (b. 1926), veteran of the Vinnytsia partisan unit, resident of the village of Pereliub, Koriukivka raion, Chernihiv oblast, LAAG. 101 TsDAHO, f. 62, op. 1, spr. 1, ark. 64. 102 TsDAHO, f. 62, op. 1, spr. 52, ark. 20–21. 103 See, e.g., Starinov, Zapiski diversanta, 409–11, 418, 426. 104 TsDAHO, f. 62, op. 1, spr. 52, ark. 23. 105 BA-MA, RH 22/102, Bl. 95. 106 Kentii and Lozyts′kyi, Viina bez poshchady, 161. 107 AAN, 202/III-120, k. 6. 108 Kentii and Lozyts′kyi, Viina bez poshchady, 171. 109 TsDAHO, f. 57, op. 4, spr. 190, ark. 171.

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274  •  Stalin’s Commandos 110 TsDAHO, f. 62, op. 1, spr. 1, ark. 85. 111 Kentii and Lozyts′kyi, Viina bez poshchady, 338. 112 TsDAHO, f. 62, op. 1, spr. 1, ark. 84. 113 TsDAHO, f. 66, op. 1, spr. 42, ark. 73–74, 76, 102. 114 TsDAHO, f. 1, op. 22, spr. 30, ark. 42. 115 Kunicki, Pamie˛tnik “Muchy”, 293. 116 Armia Krajowa w dokumentach, 3:359 (doc. no. 570). 117 TsDAVO, f. 3833, op. 1, spr. 123, ark. 6; TsDAVO, f. 3833, op. 1, spr. 154, ark. 5. 118 TsDAVO, f. 3833, op. 1, spr. 154, ark. 22. 119 TsDAHO, f. 62, op. 1, spr. 1, ark. 79. 120 See, e.g., the summary table on Soviet sabotage activity beyond the front line in the article “Partizanskoe dvizhenie v Velikoi Otechestvennoi voine 1941–45”, in Bolshaia sovetskaia entsiklopediia (located at http://slovari. yandex.ru). 121 See, e.g., TsDAHO, f. 62, op. 1, spr. 39, ark. 12–14; TsDAHO, f. 1, op. 22, spr. 58, ark. 37–44. 122 For an example of the ineffectiveness of one such absurd tactic, see BA-MA, RH 22/118, Bl. 11 f. 123 Kentii and Lozyts′kyi, Viina bez poshchady, 227. 124 Okupacja i ruch oporu, 2:525. 125 “Shtrafnye chasti v gody Velikoi Otechestvennoi voiny”, Istoricheskii arkhiv, no. 3 (2007), 46. 126 Ukraïna partyzans′ka, 53. 127 BAB, R 94/7. The folios in this file are not numbered. 128 Istoriia zasterihaie: Trofeini dokumenty pro zlochyny nimets′ko-fashysts′kykh zaharbnykiv ta ïkhnikh posibnykiv na tymchasovo okupovanii terytoriï Ukraïny v roky Velykoï Vitchyznianoï viiny (Kyiv, 1986), 175. 129 TsDAHO, f. 1, op. 22, spr. 450, ark. 10. 130 See, e.g., TsDAVO, f. 3833, op. 1, spr. 117, ark. 4. 131 For data on partisan groups that were dropped on the territory of Moldova and the area between the Buh and Dnister rivers, see Ukraïna partyzans′ka, 220–24. 132 TsDAHO, f. 62, op. 1, spr. 294, ark. 44. 133 Testimony of Alexander Milshtein, 14 August 1994 (Archive of the USHMM, RG-50.226*0023, time 01.30-33). 134 For more details, see O. Iu. Plenkov, Tretii Reikh: Natsistskoe gosudarstvo (St Petersburg, 2004), passim. 135 BAB, NS 19/2605, Bl. 80 f. 136 BAB, R 58/222, Bl. 99 f. 137 A. V. Kentii, Ukraïns′ka povstans′ka armiia v 1944–1945 rr. (Kyiv, 1999), 156. 138 Richard Overy, Russia’s War (London, 1999), 234.

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Notes  •  275 Hesse, Der sowjetrussische Partisanenkrieg, 152. Ibid., 48. Kosyk, Ukraïna i Nimechchyna, 289, 597. TsDAHO, f. 62, op. 1, spr. 1, ark. 31. Motyka, Ukrain´ska partyzantka, 244–45. TsDAHO, f. 70, op. 1, spr. 11, ark. 8. Motyka, Ukrain´ska partyzantka, 245–46. RGASPI, f. 69, op. 1, d. 29, l. 148–49. Kentii, Ukraïns′ka povstans′ka armiia, 198–99. TsDAHO, f. 63, op. 1, spr. 85, ark. 40. Ibid. TsDAVO, f. 3836, op. 1, spr. 14, ark. 1. TsDAHO, f. 97, op. 1, spr. 1, ark. 77. TsDAHO, f. 166, op. 2, spr. 74, ark. 43 zv. M. Skorups′kyi, Tudy, de bii za voliu (Kyiv, 1992), also located at www. geocities.com/upahistory/skorupski/part3.html. 154 TsDAHO, f. 166, op. 2, spr. 74, ark. 45. 155 TsDAHO, f. 64, op. 1, spr 59, ark. 106. 156 Ibid. 157 TsDAHO, f. 64, op. 1, spr. 59, ark. 110–13. 158 Ibid., ark. 124. 159 Ibid., ark. 142. 160 Ibid., ark. 143. 161 Litopys UPA, n.s., vol. 4: The Struggle against the UPA and the Nationalist Underground: Informational Documents of the Central Committee of the Communist Party (Bolshevik) of Ukraine, Party obkoms, NKVD-MVD, MGBKGB, bk. 1: 1943–1945 (Kyiv; Toronto, 2002–03), 129. 162 See, e.g., I. I. Il′iushyn, Volyns′ka trahediia 1943–1944 (Kyiv, 2003), 222– 24, 236–39; Wincenty Romanowski, ZWZ-AK na Wołyniu 1939–1944 (Lublin, 1993), 164–94. 163 Bul′ba-Borovets′, Armiia bez derzhavy, 205. 164 AAN, 203/XV-28, k. 71a; Vid Polissia do Karpat, 105. 165 TsDAHO, f. 97, op. 1, spr. 1, ark. 77. 166 TsDAHO, f. 66, op. 1, spr. 42, ark. 20–22 zv. 167 See, e.g., Litopys UPA, n.s., vol. 8: Volyn, Polissia, Podillia: UPA and Its Rear Line 1944–1946; Documents and Materials (Kyiv; Toronto, 2005), 1198–99. 168 TsDAVO, f. 3838, op. 1, spr. 59, ark. 28–29. 169 TsDAVO, f. 3833, op. 1, spr. 118, ark. 53. 170 TsDAVO, f. 3833, op. 1, spr. 154, ark. 5. 171 AAN, 202/III-122, k. 7. 172 TsDAHO, f. 63, op. 1, spr. 4, ark. 140. 173 Partizanskoe dvizhenie v gody Velikoi Otechestvennoi, 496–97.

139 140 141 142 143 144 145 146 147 148 149 150 151 152 153

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276  •  Stalin’s Commandos 174 See, e.g., TsDAVO, f. 3833, op. 1, spr. 129, ark. 6; TsDAVO, f. 3833, op. 1, spr. 126, ark. 89. 175 TsDAHO, f. 64, op. 1, spr. 59, ark. 125. 176 TsDAHO, f. 62, op. 1, spr. 252, ark. 159 ta zv. 177 TsDAVO, f. 3838, op. 1, spr. 57, ark. 37zv, 38 ta zv. 178 See, e.g., TsDAHO, f. 62, op. 1, spr. 293, ark. 101; TsDAVO, f. 3833, op. 1, spr. 157, ark. 3; Armia Krajowa w dokumentach, 3:487; TsDAVO, f. 3833, op. 1, spr. 126, ark. 79. 179 Ukraïna v Druhii svitovii viini, 4:173. 180 Kentii, Ukraïns′ka povstans′ka armiia, 190. 181 See, e.g., TsDAVO, f. 3833, op. 1, spr. 123, ark. 6; TsDAVO, f. 3833, op. 1, spr. 154, ark. 24–25 182 TsDAVO, f. 3833, op. 1, spr. 157, ark. 60. 183 Motyka, Ukrain´ska partyzantka, 260–61. 184 Serhiichuk, Radians′ki partyzany proty OUN-UPA, 14. 185 TsDAHO, f. 62, op. 1, spr. 275, ark. 129; TsDAHO, f. 62, op. 1, spr. 1, ark. 65; TsDAVO, f. 3833, op. 1, spr. 126, ark. 65. 186 Kubiiovych, Memuary, rozdumy, vybrany listy, 2:305.

Chapter Three 1 I. V. Stalin, O Velikoi Otechestvennoi voine Sovetskogo Soiuza (Moscow, 1952), 15. 2 Starinov, Miny zamedlennogo deistviia, 136. 3 TsAMO, f. 228, op. 701, d. 28, l. 16. 4 TsDAHO, f. 62, op. 8, spr. 57, ark. 35. 5 Ibid., ark. 1. 6 BAB, R 58/215, Bl. 229. 7 Ibid., Bl. 224–25; BAB, R 58/216, Bl. 196. 8 BAB, R 58/218, Bl. 4. 9 TsDAHO, f. 1, op. 22, spr. 63, ark. 62–70. 10 Kyïv u dni natsysts′koï navaly; Za dokumentamy radians′kykh spetssluzhb (Kyiv; Lviv, 2003), 205. 11 Ibid., 206. 12 D. Malakov, Oti dva roky … U Kyievi pry nimtsiakh (Kyiv, 2002), 95. 13 TsDAHO, f. 166, op. 3, spr. 372, ark. 22. 14 A. Gogun and A. Kentii, “Kak Krasnaia armiia vzryvala NKVD; Vmeste s Kievom”, Posev, no. 9 (2006). 15 BAB, R 58/219, Bl. 22. 16 A. I. Kolpakidi, and D. P. Prokhorov, KGB: spetsoperatsii sovetskoi razvedki (Moscow, 2000), 315.

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Notes  •  277 17 Hans-Heinrich Wilhem, “Der SD und die Kirchen in den besetzten Ostgebieten 1941/42”, Militärgeschichtliche Mitteilungen, no. 1 (1981), 88. 18 M. Semiriaga, Kollaboratsionizm, kollaboratsionizm: priroda, tipologiia i proiavleniia v gody vtoroi mirovoi voiny (Moscow, 2000), 820. 19 TsAMO, f. 229, op. 213, d. 58, l. 20–21. 20 GARF, f. 9478, op. 1, d. 277, l. 91. 21 Ibid., l. 51. 22 Ibid. 23 TsDAHO, f. 1, op. 22, spr. 63, ark. 106. 24 BAB, R 58/222, Bl. 99–100. 25 BAB, NS 19/2605, Bl. 78 Rückseite. 26 BA-MA, RH 22/200, Bl. 44. 27 AAN, 228/24-2, k. 52. 28 TsDAHO, f. 1, op. 22, spr. 50, ark. 7–8; TsDAHO, f. 65, op. 1, spr. 26, ark. 11, 14–15, 19; TsDAHO, f. 1, op. 22, spr. 10, ark. 164–66 29 DASO, f. 4, op. 3-r, spr. 83, fol. 34. 30 See, e.g., TsDAHO, f. 67, op. 1, spr. 93, ark. 7, 9 zv. 31 BA-MA, RH 22/102, Bl. 95. 32 Ukraïna partyzans′ka, 238. 33 TsDAHO, f. 62, op. 1, spr. 1, ark. 140–41. 34 Estimates according to BAB, R 94/18. The folios in this file are unnumbered. 35 Starinov, Miny zamedlennogo deistviia, 140. 36 Ibid., 143. 37 TsDAHO, f. 62, op. 1, spr. 275, ark. 143. 38 I. Dereiko, Mistsevi formuvannia nimets′koï armiï ta politsiï u Raikhskomisariati “Ukraïna,” (1941–1944 roky) (Kyiv, 2012). 39 A. Gogun and I. Kapas′, “Soldat piati armii”, Evreiskaia gazeta, (www. evreyskaya.de), no. 3 (103), March 2011, 23. 40 Ibid. This article is based on documents stored in the Semyon Baranovsky file in HDA SBU, no.148223. f. 64991, t.t. 1–11. 41 BA-MA, RH 22/203, Bl. 78. 42 TsDAHO, f. 1, op. 22, spr. 10, ark. 195–96. 43 TsDAHO, f. 1, op. 19, spr. 1, ark. 26. 44 BAB, NS 19/1706, Bl. 24. 45 TsDAHO, f. 57, op. 4, spr. 189, ark. 80. 46 See, e.g., BA-MA, RH 22/60, Bl. 20. 47 BAB, NS 19/2605, Bl. 78 Rückseite. 48 See, e.g., BA-MA, RH 22/175, Bl. 39 Rückseite. 49 BA-MA, RH 22/66, Bl. 41. 50 TsDAHO, f. 62, op. 1, spr. 39, ark. 99. 51 TsDAHO, f. 63, op. 1, spr. 4, ark. 87. 52 Partizanskoe dvizhenie, 165–66.

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278  •  Stalin’s Commandos 53 BA-MA, RH 22/133, Bl. 4. 54 Ukraïna partyzans′ka, 266. 55 TsDAHO, f. 62, op. 1, spr. 1308, ark. 37. 56 TsDAHO, f. 1, op. 22, spr. 61, ark. 15. 57 See, e.g., BA-MA, RW 31/250, Bl. 144 Rückseite; Vid Polissia do Karpat, 95; BA-MA, RH 22/161, Bl. 4, 56, 119. 58 Armstrong, Soviet Partisans, 37; Arnold, Die Wehrmacht und die Besatzungspolitik, 477–78; Lutz Klinkhammer, “Der Partisanenkrieg der Wehrmacht 1941– 1944”, in Die Wehrmacht: Mythos und Realitat, ed. Rolf Dieter Muller and Hans-Erich Volkmann (Munich, 1999), 815–36. Cited in Arnold, Die Wehrmacht und die Besatzungspolitik, 477. 59 TsDAHO, f. 62, op. 1, spr. 1, ark. 140. 60 Ukraïna partyzans′ka, passim. 61 TsDAHO, f. 1, op. 22, spr. 61, ark. 2. 62 Ukraïna partyzans′ka, 239. 63 V. Keitel′ [Wilhelm Keitel], 12 stupenek na eshafot (Rostov-on-Don, 2000), 314, located at http://militera.lib.ru/memo/german/keytel_v/index.html. 64 G. M. Lin′kov, Voina v tylu vraga (Moscow, 1959), 351. 65 TsDAHO, f. 62, op. 1, spr. 1, ark. 140. 66 TsDAHO, f. 62, op. 1, spr. 1, ark. 47–48. 67 BA-MA, RW 31/250, Bl. 145. 68 Testimony of Lev Ayzen, 2 August 1994 (Archive of the USHMM, RG-50.226*0003, time: 2.15–23). 69 BAB, R 58/697, Bl. 109; BA-MA, RH 22/174, Bl. 58, 58 Rückseite; BA-MA, RW 31/252, Bl. 42. 70 BAB, R 6/687, Bl. 88–89. 71 See, e.g., BAB, R 6/378, Bl. 18 Rückseite f. 72 See, e.g., TsDAVO, f. 3833, op. 1, spr. 126, ark. 90. 73 BA-MA, RW 31/252, Bl. 104. 74 Hans Pottgiesser, Die Deutsche Reichsbahn im Ostfeldzug, 1939–1944 (Stuttgart, 1960), 93. The calculation was done according to graphs; unfortunately, the author did not include accurate figures in the summarizing table. 75 See, e.g., the article “Partizanskoe dvizhenie v Velikoi otechestvennoi voine 1941–1945 gg”, in Bol′shaia sovetskaia entsiklopediia, located at http://slovari.yandex.ru. 76 Pottgiesser, Deutsche Reichsbahn, 89. 77 Ibid., 90. 78 Ibid. 79 Ibid., 58. 80 Kentii and Lozyts′kyi, Viina bez poshchady, 15. 81 See, e.g., Vid Polissia do Karpat, 25. 82 TsDAHO, f. 1, op. 22, spr. 555, ark. 5.

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Notes  •  279 83 See, e.g., TsDAHO, f. 62, op. 1, spr. 16, ark. 12; BAB, NS 19/1433, Bl. 111, 2. 84 See, e.g., TsDAHO, f. 62, op. 1, spr. 16, ark. 11; BAB, R 58/223, Bl. 167. 85 Vid Polissia do Karpat, 19. 86 RGASPI, f. 69, op. 1, d. 748, l. 154. 87 BAB, R 6/378, Bl. 26. 88 TsDAHO, f. 64, op. 1, spr. 59, ark. 37. 89 TsDAHO, f. 62, op. 1, spr. 1340, ark. 50. 90 TsDAHO, f. 62, op. 1, spr. 77, ark. 52–53. 91 Partizanskoe dvizhenie, 18. 92 Stalin, O Velikoi Otechestvennoi voine, 15. 93 TsDAHO, f. 62, op. 8, spr. 57, ark. 36. 94 Organy Gosudarstvennoi bezopasnosti SSSR v Velikoi Otechestvennoi voine, vol. 2, bk. 2 (Moscow, 1995), 371–72. 95 TsDAHO, f. 130, op. 1, spr. 231, ark. 5–39. 96 GARF, f. 9478, op. 1, d. 277, l. 95. 97 Interview conducted on 13 August 2006 with Maria Mylashych (b. 1919), village of Pereliub, Koriukivka raion, Chernihiv oblast, LAAG; interview conducted on 14 August 2006 with the Red Army veteran of the Soviet–German war Ivan Shary (b. 1924), village of Reimentarivka, Koriukivka raion, Chernihiv oblast, LAAG. 98 Interview conducted on 12 August 2006 with Maria Petrenko (b. 1930), in the village of Rudnia, Koriukivka raion, Chernihiv oblast, LAAG. 99 Interview with Vasyl Yermolenko, in LAAG. 100 TsDAHO, f. 64, op. 1, spr. 1, ark. 22. 101 Interview with Ivan Shary, LAAG. 102 TsDAHO, f. 64, op. 1, spr. 74, ark. 6. 103 Kentii and Lozyts′kyi, Viina bez poshchady, 20. 104 TsDAHO, f. 65, op. 1, spr. 26, ark. 1. 105 Ibid., ark. 43. 106 Interview conducted on 4 July 2008 with Evdokiia Laukina (b. 1930), in the village of Sopych, Hlukhiv raion, Chernihiv oblast, LAAG. 107 TsDAHO, f. 1, op. 22, spr. 563, ark. 2 zv. 108 TsDAHO, f. 130, op. 1, spr. 642, ark. 48. 109 BA-MA, RH 22/175, Bl. 39 Rückseite. 110 TsDAHO, f. 94, op. 1, spr. 9, ark. 33. 111 GARF, f. 9478, op. 1, d. 277, l. 227. 112 TsDAHO, f. 64, op. 1, spr. 56, ark. 87. 113 Ibid., ark. 93, 95. 114 Interview with Ivan Chohun (b. 1930), conducted by V. Hinda in the village of Zemlianka, Hlukhiv raion, Sumy oblast, on 3 July 2008, in LAAG. 115 TsDAHO, f.166, op. 2, spr. 351, ark. 18.

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280  •  Stalin’s Commandos 116 TsDAHO, f. 1, op. 22, spr. 59, ark. 19 117 Testimony of Lev Ayzen, 2 August 1994 (Archive of the USHMM, RG-50.226*0003, time: 2.23–25). 118 BAB, R 6/302, Bl. 35. See also BA-MA, RH 22/200, Bl. 44. 119 BAB, R 58/223, Bl. 211. 120 Partizanskoe dvizhenie, 166. 121 TsDAHO, f. 57, op. 4, spr. 189, ark. 13. 122 RGASPI, f. 69, op. 1, d. 748, l. 154. See also TsDAHO, f. 1, op. 22, spr. 61, ark. 54–55. 123 TsDAHO, f. 63, op. 1, spr. 4, ark. 95. 124 BAB, R 6/378, Bl. 20; Vid Polissia do Karpat, 136. For an oblique reference to this phenomenon, see TsDAHO, f. 97, op. 1, spr. 1, ark. 96 125 Organy Gosudarstvennoi bezopoasnosti v Velikoi Otechestvennoi voine, vol. 2-1, 363. 126 “O podgotovke El′ninskoi operatsii”, Izvestiia TsK KPSS, no. 10 (1990), 216. 127 RGASPI, f. 69, op. 1, d. 28, l. 22. 128 TsDAHO, f. 1, op. 22, spr. 61, ark. 16. 129 See, e.g., Serhiichuk, Novitnia katorha, 10. 130 TsDAVO, f. 3833, op. 1, spr. 157, ark. 61. 131 TsDAHO, f. 66, op. 1, spr. 42, ark. 95. 132 BA-MA, RH 22/24. The folios in this file are not numbered. 133 Interview conducted on 13 August 2006 with Oleksandra Shevchenko (b. 1925) in the village of Rudnia, Koriukivka raion, Chernihiv oblast, in LAAG. 134 Interview with Fedor Razstolny, LAAG. 135 TsDAHO, f. 1, op. 22, spr. 61, ark. 16. 136 TsDAHO, f. 64, op. 1, spr. 59, ark. 40, 43, 119–20. 137 Interview conducted on 3 November 2008 with Aleksei Artamonov (b. 1918) in Kyiv, stored in LAAG. 138 Interview with Vasyl Yermolenko, LAAG. 139 Yad Vashem Archive, O. 3, file 7634, time: 01.14. 140 TsDAHO, f. 166, op. 3, spr. 85, ark. 18–19. 141 TsDAHO, f. 166, op. 3, spr. 126, ark. 7. 142 BAB, R 58/224, Bl. 39. 143 Yad Vashem Archive, O. 3, file 7634, time: 01.14. 144 BAB, R 58/222, Bl. 11. 145 Vid Polissia do Karpat, 82. 146 BA-MA, RH 22/175, Bl. 39 f. 147 Kunicki, Pamie˛tnik “Muchy”, 99. 148 TsDAHO, f. 1, op. 22, spr. 66, ark. 64. See also TsDAHO, f. 1, op. 23, spr. 918, ark. 5–6. 149 Interview with Ivan Shary, LAAG.

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Notes  •  281 150 Interview with Fedor Razstolny (b. 1930), resident of the village of Reimentarivka, Koriukivka raion, Chernihiv oblast, 14 August 2006, LAAG. 151 TsDAHO, f. 166, op. 3, spr. 56, ark. 5. I am grateful to Ivan Kapas for showing me this document. 152 Kentii, Ukraïns′ka povstans′ka armiia, 200. 153 TsDAHO, f. 65, op. 1, spr. 57, ark. 113 zv. 154 TsDAVO, f. 3833, op. 1, spr. 129, ark. 6. 155 TsDAHO, f. 67, op. 1, spr. 93, ark. 4. 156 TsDAVO, f. 3833, op. 1, spr. 129, ark. 13. 157 Ia. I. Mel′nik, 554 dnia partizanskoi voiny: dnevnik, dokumenty (Moscow, 2006), 115. 158 TsDAHO, f. 57, op. 4, spr. 275, ark. 37. 159 TsDAVO, f. 3833, op. 1, spr. 116, ark. 1–3. 160 TsDAVO, f. 3833, op. 1, spr. 92, ark. 38. 161 Litopys UPA, n.s., vol. 2: Volyn and Polissia: UPA and Its Rear Line: 1943–1944: Documents and Materials, ed. O. Vovk and I. Pavlenko (Kyiv; Toronto, 1999), 272. 162 Ibid., 302. 163 TsDAHO, f. 57, op. 4, spr. 274, ark. 43. 164 A. P. Brinskii, Po tu storonu fronta: Vospominaniia partizana, 2 vols. (Moscow, 1961), 2: 356–57. 165 Boiarchuk, P., Trahediia Staroï Rafalivky: 50-richchia UPA: nevidomi storinky viiny”, Volyn′, 4 August 1992. 166 Interview with Boris Gindin, (b. 1922), resident of Tula, veteran of the Intelligence Brigade of Anton Brynsky, conducted by telephone 23 December 2009, LAAG. 167 Dnevnik partizana soedineniia pod komandovaniem A. Brinskogo Boris Gindina, zapis′ ot 14 oktiabra 1943 g., held at the archive of the scholarly educational center (NPTs) “Kholokost” in Moscow. 168 Litopys UPA, n.s., vol. 2, 272. 169 Serhiichuk, Poliaky na Volyni, 368. 170 OUN-UPA v Belarusi. 1939–1953 gg.: Dokumenty i materialy, comp. V. I. Adamushko et al. (Minsk, 2011): 76–77. 171 TsDAHO, f. 57, op. 4, spr. 212, ark.10. 172 P. O. Boiarchuk, Dorohamy boliu (Lutsk, 2003), 389–90. 173 TsDAVO, f. 3833, op. 1, spr. 115, ark. 3. 174 OUN-UPA v Belarusi, 88. 175 Litopys UPA, n.s., vol. 2, 251–52. 176 TsDAVO, f. 3833, op. 1, spr. 115, ark. 3–4. 177 TsDAVO, f. 3833, op. 1, spr. 129, ark. 43. 178 TsDAHO, f. 62, op. 1, spr. 252, ark. 99. 179 TsDAHO, f. 62, op. 1, spr. 1306, ark. 151–52.

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282  •  Stalin’s Commandos 180 TsDAVO, f. 3833, op. 1, spr. 115, ark. 6. See also TsDAVO, f. 3833, op. 1, spr. 129, ark. 43. 181 TsDAVO, f. 3833, op. 1, spr. 132, ark. 49. 182 TsDAVO, f. 3833, op. 1, spr. 126, ark. 90. 183 Motyka, Ukrain´ska partyzantka, 260. 184 Litopys UPA, n.s., vol. 4, 223. 185 TsDAHO, f. 97, op. 1, spr. 1, ark. 147. 186 See, e.g., TsDAHO, f. 65, op. 1, spr. 1, ark. 157. 187 G. P. Mishchenko and G. P. Migrin, Zadacha osoboi vazhnosti (Kyiv, 1985), 46–47. 188 TsDAHO, f. 1, op. 22, spr. 873, ark. 141–48. 189 HDA SBU, f. 60, op. 1, spr. 83530, t. 1, ark. 21–33. 190 TsDAHO, f. 64, op. 1, spr. 1, ark. 251. 191 BA-MA, RH 22/173, Bl. 47. 192 BA-MA, RH 22/82, Bl. 289. 193 BA-MA, RH 22/31, Bl. 84–85. 194 For additional details about the large Saburov unit, see TsDAHO, f. 65, op. 1, spr. 1, ark. 158. 195 Kentii and Lozyts′kyi, Viina bez poshchady, 253. 196 RGASPI, f. 69, op. 1, d. 1126, l. 28. 197 HDA SBU, f. 60, op. 1, spr. 83530, t. 1, ark. 60–61. 198 TsDAHO, f. 62, op. 1, spr. 275, ark. 7. 199 TsDAHO, f. 62, op. 1, spr. 1, ark. 116 zv–17. 200 TsDAHO, f. 166, op. 2, spr. 350, ark. 19. 201 TsDAHO, f. 62, op. 1, spr. 213, ark. 57. 202 TsDAHO, f. 62, op. 1, spr. 275, ark. 147. 203 Kentii and Lozyts′kyi, Viina bez poshchady, 260. 204 TsDAHO, f. 62, op. 1, spr. 275, ark. 21. 205 BA-MA, RH 22/173, Bl. 89. 206 Interview conducted on 3 November 2008 with Aleksei Artamonov (b. 1918), veteran of the Mikhailov Kamianets-Podilsky unit, in Kyiv, LAAG. 207 Ibid. 208 Ibid. 209 Yad Vashem Archive, O. 53, file 2, p. 10. 210 Testimony of Riva Braiter, 2 August 1994 (Archive of the USHMM, RG-50.226*0002, part 3 of 3, time: 0.23–0.35, part 2 of 3, time: 2.30–3.00). 211 L. E. Bernshtein, “Testimonies”, 06 December 2007, located at www. iremember.ru/content/view/568/24/1/24/lang.ru. 212 DASO, f. 4, op. 3-r, spr. 83, ark. 24. 213 Interview conducted on 4 November 2009 with A. Tsessarsky (b. 1920), former member of the Pobediteli Detachment of the NKGB, LAAG.

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Notes  •  283 214 215 216 217 218 219 220 221 222 223

TsDAHO, f. 62, op. 1, spr. 275, ark. 30. TsDAHO, f. 65, op. 1, spr. 1, ark. 159. TsDAHO, f. 62, op. 1, spr. 275, ark. 34. Ibid., ark. 125. Ibid., ark. 37. Estimate according to TsDAHO, f. 62, op. 1, spr. 275, ark. 73–81, 107. TsDAHO, f. 62, op. 1, spr. 275, ark. 84. Kentii and Lozyts′kyi, Viina bez poshchady, 257. TsDAHO, f. 62, op. 1, spr. 247, ark. 117. Interview conducted by T. Pastushenko on 4 July 2008 with two female residents of the large village of Chervone (Esman), Hlukhiv raion, Sumy oblast: Feodosiia Martynenko (b. 1920) and Vira Avramenko (1931), LAAG. 224 TsDAHO, f. 62, op. 1, spr. 275, ark. 3. 225 Ibid., ark. 99. 226 Ibid., ark. 65. 227 Ibid., ark. 124. 228 See, e.g., TsDAHO, f. 64, op. 1, spr. 1, ark. 262–63. 229 TsDAHO, f. 66, op. 1, spr. 8, ark. 3–4. 230 For a detailed discussion of the security service of the Ukrainian nationalists, see D. V. Viedienieiev and H. S. Bystrukhin, Mech i tryzub: Rozvidka i kontrrozvidka rukhu ukraïns′kykh natsionalistiv ta Ukraïns′koï povstans′koï armiï, 1920–1945 (Kyiv, 2006); idem, “Povstans′ka rozvidka diie tochno i vidvazhno…”: Dokumental′na spadshchyna pidrozdiliv spetsial′noho pryznachennia Orhanizatsiï ukraïns′kykh natsionalistiv ta Ukraïns′koï povstans′koï armiï, 1940–1950 roky (Kyiv, 2006). 231 TsDAHO, f. 66, op. 1, spr. 8, ark. 6. 232 A. Geifman, Revoliutsionnyi terror v Rossii, 1894–1917 (Moscow, 1997), passim. 233 TsDAHO, f. 57, op. 4, spr. 200, ark. 2–4. 234 Organy Gosudarstvennoi bezopasnosti SSSR, vol. 5, bk. 2, doc. no. 1984, 166. 235 HDA SBU, f. 62, op. 3, spr. 32, ark. 6–7. 236 Ibid., ark. 3. 237 Ibid., ark. 23. 238 BAB, R 58/697, Bl. 41, 84, 109. 239 Interview conducted on 4 November 2009 with A. Tsessarsky (b. 1920), former member of the NKVD’s Pobediteli Detachment, LAAG. 240 Organy Gosudarstvennoi bezopasnosti SSSR, vol. 5, bk. 2, doc. no. 1988, 176. 241 Ibid. 242 Ibid., doc. no. 2074, p. 465. 243 Interview with A. Tsessarsky, LAAG.

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284  •  Stalin’s Commandos 244 Organy Gosudarstvennoi Bezopasnosti SSSR, vol. 5, bk. 1, doc. no. 1777, 170–71. 245 TsDAHO, f. 57, op. 4, spr. 276, ark. 13–14. I am grateful to Volodymyr Hinda, who provided me with this document. 246 Interview with A. Tsessarsky, LAAG. 247 TsDAHO, f. 62, op. 1, spr. 1308, ark. 221. 248 Organy Gosudarstvennoi Bezopasnosti SSSR, vol. 4, bk. 2, doc. no. 1675, 524. 249 TsDAHO, f. 64, op. 1, spr. 60, ark. 45. 250 Jósef Turowski, Poz˙oga: Walki 27 Wołyn´skiej Dywizji AK (Warsaw, 1990), 89–90. 251 Zevelev, Kurlat, and Kozitskii, Nenavist′, 247; Mishchenko and Migrin, Zadacha osoboi vazhnosti, 142. 252 V. Hinda to A. Gogun, 23 July 2009, about terrorist acts committed on the territory of Zhytomyr oblast in 1941–43, LAAG. 253 Zevelev, Kurlat, and Kozitskii, Nenavist′, 248. 254 Interview conducted by Ivan Dereiko on 18 November 2009 with Zinaida Zhdanovych (b. 1926), resident of the city of Ovruch in Zhytomyr oblast, LAAG. 255 Interview conducted on 18 November 2009 with Eva Makarenko (née Shahoi; b. 1921), resident of Ovruch, LAAG. 256 TsDAHO, f. 66, op. 1, spr. 42, ark. 74. 257 Turowski, Poz˙oga, 135. 258 TsDAHO, f. 1, op. 22, spr. 901, ark. 111–12, 157, 160–61. 259 TsDAHO, f. 62, op. 8, spr. 14, ark. 1, 3–6. 260 TsDAHO, f. 1, op. 22, spr. 901, ark. 120–21. 261 TsDAHO, f. 62, op. 1, spr. 213, ark. 4. 262 HDA SBU, f. 60, spr. 83503, t. 1, ark. 349–52. 263 E. V. Sytnik and V. S. Nakonechnyi, Pod psevdonimom “Doroshenko”: k 100-letiiu so dnia rozhdeniia organizatora i rukovoditelia podpol′noi spetsgruppy organov NKVD “Avangard” razvedchika “Doroshenko” (Golovatogo R. N.) (Donetsk, 2002), 14. 264 Ibid., 25. 265 Organy Gosudarstvennoi Bezopasnosti SSSR, vol. 4, bk. 1, p. 71. 266 Irena Paczyn´ska, O latach wspólnej walki: Obywatele radzieccy w ruchu partyzanckim na ziemi kieleckiej i krakowskiej (Warsaw, 1978), 210, 214. 267 Ibid. 268 HDA SBU, f. 60, op. 1, spr. 86751, vol. 46, ark. 16–17. 269 Teresa Kuczyn´ska, “Chciał dobrze, a został zaprzan´cem”, Przegla ˛d, 9 June 2005. 270 Paczyn´ska, O latach wspólnej walki, 239; Tadeusz Studzin´ski, Pie˛ć mostów i inne akcje: Wspomnienia partyzanckie oficera Armii Krajowej (Cracow, 1992), 310–64.

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Notes  •  285 271 TsDAHO, f. 62, op. 1, spr. 178, ark. 22. 272 TsDAHO, f. 62, op. 1, spr. 199, ark. 19. 273 TsDAHO, f. 62, op. 1, spr. 178, ark. 59. 274 TsDAHO, f. 62, op. 1, spr. 176, ark. 2, 21, 67, 96. 275 TsDAHO, f. 62, op. 1, spr. 241, ark. 19. 276 TsDAHO, f. 62, op. 1, spr. 1623, ark. 95. 277 TsDAHO, f. 62, op. 1, spr. 241. 278 TsDAHO, f. 1, op. 19, spr. 14, ark. 28. 279 TsDAHO, f. 1, op. 22, spr. 901, ark. 36. 280 Analyzed on the basis of TsDAHO, f. 62, op. 1, spr. 241, ark. 2v, 5, 11–12, 16; TsDAHO, f. 62, op. 1, spr. 275, ark. 28, 44; TsDAHO, f. 67, op. 1, spr. 13, ark. 50; TsDAHO, f. 166, op. 3, spr. 126, ark. 13. 281 TsDAHO, f. 62, op. 1, spr. 241, ark. 20; TsDAHO, f. 62, op. 1, spr. 241, ark. 26. 282 TsDAHO, f. 62, op. 1, spr. 241, ark. 29. 283 Ibid., ark. 34. 284 A. F. Khrenov, Mosty k pobede (Moscow, 1982). See the chapter entitled “Nepobezhdennye”, located at http://militera.lib.ru/memo/russian/ hrenov_af/index.html. 285 Alesandru Dutu, Florica Dobre, and Leonida Loghin, Armata Româna˘ în al Doilea Ra˘zboi Mondial 1941–1945: dict¸ionar enciclopedic (Bucharest, 1999), 229. 286 GARF, f. 9478, op. 1, d. 22, l. 72. 287 www.lexikon-der-wehrmacht.de/Personenregister/B/BraunGeorg-R. htm. 288 BAB, R 58/222, Bl. 175–76. 289 A. P. Brinskii, Po tu storonu fronta: Vospominaniia partizana, 2 vols. (Gorky, 1966), 1:446. 290 Ibid., 2:336–37, 340, 385, 482. 291 TsDAHO, f. 166, op. 2, spr. 121a, ark. 2. 292 TsDAHO, f. 96, op. 1, spr. 1, ark. 34. 293 BAB, R 58/222, Bl. 14. 294 TsDAHO, f. 96, op. 1, spr. 1, ark. 36. 295 TsDAHO, f. 166, op. 2, spr. 121a, ark. 25. 296 Ibid., spr. 121a, ark. 26. 297 Ibid., spr. 121a, ark. 27–28. 298 Ibid., spr. 121a, ark. 6. 299 TsDAHO, f. 62, op. 5, spr. 77, ark. 302. 300 TsDAHO, f. 166, op. 2, spr. 121a, ark. 33. 301 TsDAHO, f. 96, op. 1, spr. 1, ark. 500. 302 TsA FSB, Arkhivno-sledstvennoe delo Abrama Likhtenshteina, RP 20541, l. 74.

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286  •  Stalin’s Commandos 303 Ibid., l. 110. 304 TsDAHO, f. 166, op. 2, spr. 121a, ark. 7. 305 Interview conducted on 11 September 2010 with H. Voitseshuk (b. 1914), female resident of the city of Slavuta, Khmelnytsky oblast, veteran of the underground, LAAG. 306 TsDAHO, f. 166, op. 2, spr. 121a, ark. 69. 307 M. K. Kuz′min, Mediki—Geroi Sovetskogo Soiuza (Moscow, 1969), 55. 308 TsDAHO, f. 166, op. 2, spr. 121a, ark. 5. 309 TsAMO, Fond lichnykh del. Delo Mikhailova F.M. No, 1846826, l. 2, 4, ob. 7. 310 TsDAHO, f. 57, op. 4, spr. 285, ark. 23. See also TsDAHO, f. 62, op. 1, spr. 519, ark. 10. 311 TsDAHO, f. 166, op. 2, spr. 121a, ark. 3. 312 RGASPI, f. 69, op. 1, d. 1105, l. 39–40. 313 TsDAHO, f. 1, op. 22, spr. 95, ark. 18. 314 Sovetskaia propaganda v gody Velikoi Otechestvennoi voiny: “kommunikatsiia ubezhdeniia” i mobilizatsionnye mekhanizmy, comp. A. Ia. Livshin and I. B. Orlov (Moscow, 2008), 648–49. 315 Ibid., 650. 316 TsDAHO, f. 1, op. 22, spr. 630, ark. 200. 317 TsDAHO, f. 65, op. 1, spr. 1, ark. 185. 318 TsDAHO, f. 1, op. 19, spr. 1, ark. 18. 319 TsDAHO, f. 62, op. 1, spr. 1, ark. 118 zv. 320 TsDAHO, f. 1, op. 19, spr. 1, ark. 18–19. 321 RGASPI, f. 69, op. 1, d. 1124, l. 8–10. 322 RGASPI, f. 69, op. 1, d. 1090, l. 22 zv. 323 TsDAHO, f. 1, op. 22, spr. 95, ark. 1. 324 TsDAHO, f. 64, op. 1, spr. 21, ark. 1 ta zv. 325 TsDAHO, f. 1, op. 22, spr. 95, ark. 4. 326 TsDAHO, f. 62, op. 1, spr. 40, ark. 53. 327 Sovetskaia propaganda, 651. 328 TsDAHO, f. 1, op. 22, spr. 61, ark. 52, 55. 329 TsDAHO, f. 1, op. 22, spr. 61, ark. 43. 330 TsDAHO, f. 56, op. 1 spr. 863, ark. 1 ta zv 331 TsDAHO, f. 56, op. 1, spr. 442, ark. 1 ta zv. 332 TsDAHO, f. 1, op. 22, spr. 61, ark. 45. 333 TsDAHO, f. 56, op. 1, spr. 377, ark. 1 zv. See also Saburov’s leaflets, TsDAHO, f. 65, op. 1, spr. 57, ark. 57, 102. 334 TsDAHO, f. 63, op. 1, spr. 153, ark. 5–5 zv. 335 TsDAHO, f. 56, op. 1, spr. 442, ark. 2. 336 TsDAHO, f. 65, op. 1, spr. 57, ark. 13 zv. 337 See, e.g., TsDAHO, f. 65, op. 1, spr. 57, ark. 16. 338 TsDAHO, f. 65, op. 1, spr. 57, ark. 184.

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Notes  •  287 339 TsDAHO, f. 65, op. 1, spr. 57, ark. 100. 340 TsDAHO, f. 1, op. 22, spr. 61, ark. 59. 341 TsDAHO, f. 56, op. 1, spr. 377, ark. 1 zv. 342 TsDAHO, f. 56, op. 1, spr. 960, ark. 1. See also TsDAHO, f. 65, op. 1, spr. 57, ark. 171. 343 Sovetskaia propaganda, 650. 344 A. Dallin, R. Mavrogordato, and W. Moll, in Armstrong, Soviet Partisans, 237. 345 TsDAHO, f. 1, op. 22, spr. 630, ark. 111. 346 TsDAHO, f. 65, op. 1, spr. 57, ark. 88, 102. 347 TsDAHO, f. 56, op. 1, spr. 377, ark. 1 zv. 348 TsDAHO, f. 65, op. 1, spr. 57, ark. 33. 349 Ibid., ark. 93. 350 Ibid., ark. 98. 351 RGASPI, f. 69, op. 1, d. 1126, l. 16. 352 Istoriia zasterihaie, 176. 353 See, e.g., TsDAVO, f. 3833, op. 1, spr. 92, ark. 38.

Chapter Four 1 TsDAHO, f. 62, op. 8, spr. 16, ark. 1–16. 2 TsDAHO, f. 1, op. 22, spr. 249, ark. 41. 3 Partizanskoe dvizhenie, 20. See also E. Zhirnov, “Za partizanami sokhranena zarabotnaia plata”, Kommersant vlast′, 28 November 2011. 4 TsDAHO, f. 62, op. 9, spr. 3, ark. 6. 5 TsDAHO, f. 1, op. 22, spr. 61, ark. 3. 6 Interview with Vasyl Yermolenko, LAAG. 7 See, e.g., the following German documents: BA-MA, RH 22/203, Bl. 97 Rückseite; BA-MA, RH 22/60. Bl. 83. See also the following Soviet documents: TsDAHO, f. 65, op. 1, spr. 105, ark. 13a, 19; TsDAHO, f. 65, op. 1, spr. 26, ark. 43; TsDAHO, f. 97, op. 1, spr. 1, ark. 108. 8 BA-MA, RH 22/60, Bl. 28. 9 TsDAHO, f. 166, op. 2, spr. 350, ark. 19. 10 TsDAHO, f. 1, op. 22, spr. 61, ark. 4–5. 11 BAB, R 58/223, Bl. 243; AAN, 202/III-120, k. 6; TsDAVO, f. 3833, op. 1, spr. 121, ark. 13–14. 12 Kentii and Lozyts′kyi, Viina bez poshchady, 142–43. 13 D. V. Veriutin, “Deiatel′nost′ organov NKVD na territorii Tsentral′nogo Chernozem′ia nakanune i v gody Velikoi Otechestvennoi voiny”, Candidate of Historical Sciences diss. (Kursk, 2002), 19; O. I. Kulagin, “‘Chuzhie’ sredi svoikh (byvshie zakliuchennye GULAGa v partizanskikh

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288  •  Stalin’s Commandos otriadakh Karel′skogo fronta 1941–1944 gg.)”, Svoe i chuzhoe v kul′ture narodov evropeiskogo Severa; Materialy 6-i mezhdunarodnoi nauchnoi konferentsii (Petrozavodsk, 2007), 78–79. 14 TsDAHO, f. 62, op. 4, spr. 52. I am grateful to the late A. Kentii for showing me this document. 15 TsDAHO, f. 62, op. 1, spr. 291, ark. 11. 16 Interview with V. Yermolenko, LAAG. For corroboration of this in the documents of the unit, see TsDAHO, f. 62, op. 1, spr. 41, ark. 14. 17 The data uncovered by the archivist A. Kentii are cited according to the personnel lists of large Soviet Ukrainian partisan units, which were compiled after the war. For information on M. Naumov’s cavalry unit, see TsDAHO, f. 62, op. 28 (st.), spr. 1013 (st.), ark. 5–6, 1–111. 18 TsDAHO, f. 62, op. 28, spr. 1014 (st.), ark. 7–8, 170–76. 19 TsDAHO, f. 62, op. 28, spr. 1008 (st.), ark. 1v-1g, 271–83. 20 TsDAHO, f. 62, op. 28, spr. 1004 (st.), ark. 7–8, 318–43 21 TsDAHO, f. 62, op. 28, spr. 1011 (st.), ark. 4–5. 22 TsDAHO, f. 62, op. 28, spr. 1034 (st.), ark. 1e. 23 TsDAHO, f. 62, op. 28, spr. 1028 (st.), ark. 1v, 257–64. 24 TsDAHO, f. 62, op. 28, spr. 1016 (st.), ark. 1b 25 TsDAHO, f. 62, op. 28, spr. 1015 (st.), ark. 1e–1t, 235–45 26 TsDAHO, f. 62, op. 28, spr. 1009 (st.), ark. 1v–1g. 27 TsDAHO, f. 62, op. 28, spr. 1012 (st.), ark. 7. 28 This list is compiled on the basis of the biographical dictionary, Geroi Sovetskogo Soiuza: Kratkii biograficheskii slovar′, v dvukh tomakh (Moscow, 1987–88), passim. The Russian edition of this book contains a table of names with information about these individuals. 29 Vid Polissia do Karpat, 109. 30 TsDAHO, f. 64, op. 1, spr. 59, ark. 44. 31 TsDAHO, f. 63, op. 1, spr. 85, ark. 53. 32 TsDAHO, f. 62, op. 1, spr. 52, ark. 21. 33 TsDAHO, f. 62, op. 1, spr. 41, ark. 220. 34 Starinov, Zapiski diversanta, 386. 35 GARF, f. 9478, op. 1, d. 22, l. l. 44–46. 36 I. Bilas, Represyvno-karal′na systema v Ukraïni, 2: 412–13. For corroboration, see TsDAHO, f. 1, op. 22, spr. 67, ark. 102. 37 TsDAHO, f. 66, op.1, spr. 42, ark. 80. 38 Earl Zimke, in Armstrong, Soviet Partisans, 182. 39 Bilas, Represyvno-karal′na systema, 2:283. 40 TsDAHO, f. 96, op. 1, spr. 1, ark. 472. 41 Slepyan, Stalin’s Guerrillas, 12. 42 M. Skorups′kyi, Tudy, de bii za voliu, located at www.geocities.com/ upahistory/skorupski/part2.html. 43 Interview with Vasyl Yermolenko, LAAG.

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Notes  •  289 44 See, e.g., the article “Partizanskoe dvizhenie v Belorussii” posted on the official site of the Ministry of Defense of the Republic of Belarus, located at http://mod.mil.by/51partizany.html. 45 Kentii and Lozyts′kyi, Viina bez poshchady, 13. 46 Ibid. 47 N. S. Khrushchev, Osvobozhdenie ukrainskikh zemel′ ot nemetskikh zakhvatchikov i ocherednye zadachi vosstanovleniia narodnogo khoziaistva sovetskoi Ukrainy; Doklad predsedatelia SNK USSR na VI sessii Verkhovnogo soveta USSR 1 marta 1944 goda v g. Kieve (Moscow, 1944), 21. 48 Kentii and Lozyts′kyi, Viina bez poshchady, 13. 49 Ukraïna partyzans′ka, 24–25. 50 Amir Weiner, Making Sense of War: The Second World War and the Fate of the Bolshevik Revolution (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2001), passim. 51 TsDAHO, f. 57, op. 4, spr. 200, ark. 2–3. 52 Z arkhiviv VUChK-GPU-NKVD-KGB, nos. 1–2 (1995), 15–28. 53 TsDAHO, f. 64, op. 1, spr. 1, ark. 104. 54 TsDAHO, f. 240, op. 1, spr. 3, ark. 51–52. Not included in this list of 51 individuals are the commanders of three Polish brigades that were transferred in the spring of 1944 to the Polish Staff of the Partisan Movement, which was created in Ukraine. 55 TsDAHO, f. 1, op. 22, spr. 10, ark. 174–75. 56 TsDAHO, f. 62, op. 1, spr. 1, ark. 54. 57 BAB, R 58/214, Bl. 31. 58 BAB, R 58/222, Bl. 188. 59 A. P. Brinskii, Po tu storonu fronta: Vospominaniia partizana, bk. 1 (Gorky, 1966), 204–05. 60 TsDAHO, f. 62, op. 1, spr. 41, ark. 149. 61 Litopys UPA, n.s., vol. 2, 310. 62 Kentii and Lozyts′kyi, Viina bez poshchady, 291. 63 See, e.g., TsDAHO, f. 62, op. 1, spr. 1289, ark. 74. 64 TsDAHO, f. 65, op. 1, spr. 26, ark. 122 zv. 65 Juchniewicz, Na Wschód od Bugu, 25–60. 66 Kunicki, Pamie˛tnik “Muchy”, 17–100. 67 Sovetskaia Ukraina v gody Velikoi Otechestvennoi voiny 1941–1945; Dokumenty i materialy, vol. 3 (Kyiv, 1980), 231. 68 See, e.g., AAN, 203/XV-5, k. 103–4. 69 TsDAHO, f. 62, op. 1, spr. 252, ark. 113–17 zv. 70 See, e.g., TsDAHO, f. 62, op. 1, spr. 245, ark. 70 ta zv. 71 See, e.g., TsDAHO, f. 62, op. 1, spr. 1530, ark.153; TsDAHO, f. 64, op. 1, spr. 21, ark. 47–52. 72 M. Hon, Iz kryvdoiu na samoti: Ukraïns′ko-ievreis′ki vzaiemyny na zakhidnoukraïns′kykh zemliakh u skladi Pol′shchi (Rivne, 2005).

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290  •  Stalin’s Commandos These figures are based on Elisavetskii, Polveka zabveniia, 74. BAB, R 6/687, Bl. 15. See, e.g., TsDAHO, f. 1, op. 22, spr. 61, ark. 13. TsDAHO, f. 1, op. 22, spr. 10, ark. 74. Interview conducted on 4 November 2009 with A. Tsessarskii (b. 1920), veteran of the NKGB Pobediteli Detachment, LAAG. 78 S. Dodik, “Sud′ba i zhizn′ mal′chika iz rasstreliannogo getto”, located at www.proza.ru/2004/01/10-149. 79 Brinskii, Po tu storonu fronta, bk. 2, 70. 80 RGASPI, f. 69, op. 1, d. 746, l. 220. Cited in Bogdan Musiał, Sowjetische Partisanen: Mythos und Wirklichkeit (Paderborn, 2009), 390. 81 Interview with Tsessarskii, LAAG. 82 Reminiscences of Shmuel Tiktin, veteran of the NKVD’s Pobediteli Detachment (Yad Vashem Audio Archive, 0.33.C/2470, time: 31:00 to 33:00). On p. 229 of his book Polveka zabveniia, Ster Elisavetskii provides the following incomplete reference: Yad Vashem Archive, 03/6561, 10. 83 AAN, 203/XV-25, k. 4. 84 Manuscript to be included in the Encyclopedia of Forced Labor Camps (Zwangsarbeitslager), forthcoming (2017), Sara Halpern and Martin Dean, Skalat (ZAKfj), USHMM. 85 TsDAHO, f. 62, op. 1, spr. 1308, ark. 54. 86 Vid Polissia do Karpat, 80, 105. 87 Zvi Fenster’s postwar account of the destruction of the Jewish population in Jezierzany (Ukrainian Ozeriany, in today’s Ternopil oblast) by German legal agencies (ITS, 1.2.7.8., fol. 5, p. 288). I am grateful to Martin Dean for showing me this document. 88 TsDAHO, f. 62, op. 1, spr. 25, ark. 23. 89 TsDAHO, f. 64, op. 1, spr. 103, ark. 18 zv. 90 TsDAHO, f. 64, op. 1, spr. 60, ark. 22. 91 Elisavetskii, Polveka zabveniia, 75. 92 Cited in ibid., 74, 313–84. 93 Hesse, Der sowjetrussische Partisanenkrieg, 136. 94 A. Gogun and M. Cerovic, “Vospominaniia veterana Lel′chitskoi partizan­ skoi brigady GRU T. Markovskoi (Gorbuntsovoi)”, Holokost i suchasnist′: Studiï v Ukraïni i sviti, no. 1 (2009), located at www.holocaust.kiev.ua.



73 74 75 76 77

Chapter Five 1 See, e.g., Organy Gosudarstvennoi bezopasnosti SSSR, vol. 2, bk. 1, 410. 2 Partizanskoe dvizhenie, 496–97. 3 See, e.g., the interview with Ivan Shary; the interview with Fedor Razstolny; the interview conducted on 13 August 2006 with Daria

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Notes  •  291 Lapitan (b. 1930), resident of the village of Pereliub, Koriukivka raion, Chernihiv oblast, LAAG. 4 TsDAHO, f. 62, op. 1, spr. 52, ark. 23. 5 TsDAHO, f. 64, op. 1, spr. 59, ark. 1. For similar statements about the Sumy unit, see TsDAHO, f. 62, op. 1, spr. 40, ark. 149. 6 AAN, 203/XV-28, k. 71, 71a. 7 AAN, 203/XV-28, k. 129. 8 BAB, R 58/215, Bl. 228. 9 BAB, R 58/60, Bl. 2, 6–7. For information on events that took place in Chernihiv oblast, see BA-MA, RH 22/175, Bl. 40. 10 Interview with Vasyl Yermolenko, LAAG. 11 TsDAHO, f. 64, op. 1, spr. 59, ark. 22. 12 E.g., the Sumy oblast: BA-MA, RH 22/175, Bl. 40. 13 Vid Polissia do Karpat, 78. 14 Ibid., 107. 15 Sovetskaia Ukraina v gody Velikoi Otechestvennoi voiny, 1941–1945, vol. 2 (Kyiv, 1980), 235. 16 TsDAHO, f. 97, op. 1, spr. 1, ark. 104–05. 17 TsDAHO, f. 1, op. 22, spr. 22, ark. 14 zv. Similar information is cited in a German document. See Organy gosudarstvennoi bezopasnosti, vol. 3, bk. 2, 607. 18 Anna Graz´ina Kister, Meldunki sytuacyjne Komendy Okre˛gu Lublin AK, mai–lipiec 1944 (Lublin, 1998), 46. 19 TsDAHO, f. 63, op. 1, spr. 4, ark. 143. 20 Bul′ba-Borovets′, Armiia bez derzhavy, 207. 21 TsDAHO, f. 62, op. 1, spr. 1530, ark. 98. 22 TsDAVO, f. 3833, op. 1, spr. 92, ark. 26. 23 Ibid., ark. 30, 31 zv. 24 TsDAVO, f. 3833, op. 1, spr. 126, ark. 65. 25 TsDAHO, f. 64, op. 1, spr. 22, ark. 14 zv. 26 TsDAHO, f. 105, op. 1, spr. 12, ark. 68. 27 TsDAHO, f. 65, op. 1, spr. 1, ark. 218. 28 Interview with Vasyl Yermolenko, LAAG. 29 HDA SBU RO, spr. 18783, ark. 423, packet no. 2, p. 5. This document was graciously offered to me by O. Vovk. 30 TsDAHO, f. 64, op. 1, spr. 59, ark. 93. 31 TsDAHO, f. 66, op. 1, spr. 42, ark. 113–14. 32 TsDAHO, f. 97, op. 1, spr. 1, ark. 106–07. 33 Interview with Vasyl Yermolenko, LAAG. For confirmation from Rudnev’s journal, see TsDAHO, f. 63, op. 1, spr. 85, ark. 22. 34 TsDAHO, f. 66, op. 1, spr. 42, ark. 80–81. 35 Ibid., ark. 81–82. 36 TsDAHO, f. 62, op. 1, spr. 40, ark. 55.

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292  •  Stalin’s Commandos 37 AIRI RAN, f. 2, razd. II, op. 9/20. d. 1, l. 17. 38 From Ukraine in early 1942: TsDAHO, f. 1, op. 22, spr. 63, ark. 64–70. 39 RGASPI, f. 17, op. 88, d. 480, l. 159–60. 40 TsDAHO, f. 1, op. 22, spr. 8, ark. 30–32, 35. 41 Ibid., ark. 37–38. 42 TsDAHO, f. 66, op. 1, spr. 42, ark. 55. 43 Calculations are based on Vinok bezsmertia: Knyha-memorial, ed. O. F. Fedorov, V. A. Maniak, et al. (Kyiv, 1987), passim. Similar data appear in Ukraïna pid natsysts′koiu okupatsiieiu: spaleni sela (1941–1944 rr.): Anotovanyi pokazhchyk, ed. V. F. Soldatenko (Kyiv, 2012), 47–48. 44 Here and there in the book Vinok bezsmertia the descriptions of some (infrequent) punitive operations do not indicate the date when a particular village was burned or they list two different dates. In some cases, data on victims and demolitions are listed under a specific year, depending on the context. The resulting inaccuracy does not exceed 5 per cent of both the number of villages and the number of people killed. 45 RGASPI, f. 69, op. 1, d. 28, l. 50 ob. 46 TsDAHO, f. 62, op. 1, spr. 1, ark. 112–13 zv; RGASPI, f. 69, op. 1, d. 28, l. 80–86. 47 RGASPI, f. 69, op. 1, d. 28, l. 159. 48 Bilas, Represyvno-karal′na systema v Ukraïni, bk. 2, 362. 49 AIRI RAN, f. 2. Razd. II, op. 9/3, d. 18 a, l. 4. 50 TsDAHO, f. 166, op. 3, spr. 86, ark. 136. I am grateful to Ivan Kapas, who graciously offered me this document. 51 HDA SBU, f. 60, op.1, spr. 99607, t. 2, ark. 47. 52 TsDAHO, f. 166, op. 3, spr. 88, ark. 49. Ivan Kapas graciously offered me this document. 53 TsDAHO, f. 62, op. 1, spr. 1, ark. 3–4 zv. 54 Sovetskaia propaganda, 427. 55 K. Berkkhoff [Karel Berkhoff], “Pogolovnoe unichtozhenie evreiskogo naseleniia: Kholokost v sovetskikh SMI (1941–1945)”, Holokost i suchasnist′: Studiï v Ukraïni i sviti, no. 1 (2010), 78–79, located at www. holocaust.kiev.ua.

Chapter Six

1 2 3 4 5 6

Yad Vashem Archive, O. 3, file 7634, time: 01.19–20. TsDAHO, f. 62, op. 1, spr. 1, ark. 113 zv. TsDAHO, f. 62, op. 1, spr. 1308, ark. 33. Ibid., ark. 46. TsDAHO, f. 62, op. 1, spr. 40, ark. 149–50. TsDAHO, f. 64, op. 1, spr. 59, ark. 1.

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Notes  •  293 7 Ibid., ark. 50–51. 8 Ibid., ark. 58–59. 9 TsDAHO, f. 64, op. 1, spr. 9, ark. 88. 10 See also TsDAHO, f. 65, op. 1, spr. 38, ark. 5 ta zv. 11 Bilas, Represyvno-karal′na systema v Ukraïni, bk. 2, 363–64. A similar document, dated 23 January, is on pp. 362–63. 12 Ukraïna partyzans′ka, 278. 13 Ibid. 14 TsDAHO, f. 62, op. 1, spr. 1308, ark. 29. 15 Interview with Ivan Shary, LAAG. 16 TsDAHO, f. 66, op. 1, spr. 42, ark. 46–47. 17 TsDAHO, f. 62, op. 1, spr. 1289, ark. 70. 18 See Boiarchuk, Trahediia Staroï Rafalivky. 19 TsDAHO, f. 1, op. 22, spr. 66, ark. 44. 20 Ibid., ark. 55. 21 TsDAHO, f. 62, op. 1, spr. 1308, ark. 180. 22 See, e.g., TsDAHO, f. 62, op. 1, spr. 1289, ark. 48. 23 Sovetskaia Ukraina v gody Velikoi Otechestvennoi voiny, 2: 235. 24 TsDAHO, f. 64, op. 1, spr. 59, ark. 43, 49–51, 88. 25 Armstrong, Soviet Partisans, 748–09. 26 TsDAHO, f. 63, op. 1, spr. 85, ark. 41. 27 TsDAHO, f. 62, op. 28 (st.), spr. 1004, ark. 12, 262. I am grateful to A. Kentii for providing me with these documents. 28 See, e.g., TsDAHO, f. 64, op. 1, spr. 59, ark. 58. 29 See Kister, Meldunki sytuacyjne, passim. 30 Iu. Veremeev, “Vodka na fronte”, located at www.opohmel.ru/low/ narkom.asp. 31 Bilas, Represeyvno-karal′na systema v Ukraïni, 2: 315. 32 Zimke, in Armstong, Soviet partisans, 188. 33 TsDAHO, f. 94, op. 1, spr. 9, ark. 39. 34 TsDAHO, f. 65, op. 1, spr. 105, ark. 14 zv. 35 TsDAHO, f. 65, op. 1, spr. 105, 14 zv, 29 zv, 31–32, 34, 41 zv, 42, 48–48 zv. 36 TsDAHO, f. 62, op. 1, spr. 39, ark. 22. 37 TsDAHO, f. 62, op. 1, spr. 1308, ark. 23. 38 TsDAHO, f. 62, op. 1, spr. 1308, ark. 32–32 zv. 39 See, e.g., TsDAHO, f. 62, op. 1, spr. 262, ark. 186–87; TsDAHO, f. 62, op. 1, spr. 1308, ark. 19; TsDAHO, f. 240, op. 1, spr. 3, ark. 9. 40 TsDAHO, f. 62, op. 1, spr. 1381, ark. 140. 41 Interview with Vasyl Yermolenko, LAAG. 42 Testimony of Lev Ayzen, 2 August 1994 (Archive of the USHMM, RG-50.226*0003, time: 2.30–35). 43 TsDAHO, f. 62, op. 1, spr. 1308, ark. 39.

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294  •  Stalin’s Commandos

44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53

TsDAHO, f. 240, op. 1, spr. 3, ark. 9. TsDAHO, f. 62, op. 1, spr. 52, ark. 23. TsDAHO, f. 62, op. 1, spr. 1359, ark. 147. TsDAHO, f. 62, op. 1, spr. 1530, ark. 8. Ibid., ark. 98. TsDAHO, f. 62, op. 1, spr. 40, ark. 42. Ibid., ark. 149. TsDAHO, f. 64, op. 1, spr. 59, ark. 34. Ibid., ark. 76. V. S. Antonov, “Peredyshki v zhizni emu ne vypadalo”, Nezavisimoe voennoe obozrenie, 22 August 2008, located at http://nvo.ng.ru/spforces/200808-22/14_medvedev.html. 54 TsDAHO, f. 64, op. 1, spr. 60, ark. 29–30. 55 Ibid., ark. 35. 56 Ibid., ark. 41. 57 TsDAHO, f. 62, op. 1, spr. 52, ark. 21. 58 TsDAHO, f. 66, op. 1, spr. 42, ark. 67. 59 Ibid., ark. 74. 60 Ibid., ark. 113–14. 61 Dodik, “Sud′ba i zhizn′ mal′chika”, located at www.proza.ru/2004/01/ 10-149. 62 TsDAVO, f. 3833, op. 1, spr. 137, ark. 5. 63 TsDAVO. f. 3833, op. 1, spr. 129, ark. 51. 64 TsDAVO, f. 3833, op. 1, spr. 157, ark. 23. 65 TsDAVO, f. 3833, op. 1, spr. 126, ark. 65. 66 Litopys UPA, n.s., vol. 2, 248. 67 TsDAVO, f. 3833, op. 1, spr. 115, ark. 5. 68 Boiarchuk, Trahediia Staroï Rafalivky. 69 TsDAHO, f. 62, op. 1, spr. 40, ark. 20. 70 Ibid., ark. 21. 71 Ibid., ark. 150. 72 TsDAHO, f. 62, op. 1, spr. 1308, ark. 46. 73 TsDAHO, f. 64, op. 1, spr. 59, ark. 83–84. 74 Ibid., ark. 91. 75 TsDAHO, f. 64, op. 1, spr. 60, ark. 24–25. 76 TsDAHO, f. 62, op. 1, spr. 38, ark. 80. 77 Ukraïns′ke derzhavotvorennia, 453. 78 For detailed discussion of this phenomenon, see I. A. Kurganov, Zhenshchiny i kommunizm (New York, 1968); idem, Sem′ia v SSSR, 1917– 1967 (New York, 1967), passim. 79 TsDAHO, f. 1, op. 22, spr. 61, ark. 16. 80 TsDAHO, f. 62, op. 1, spr. 40, ark. 149. 81 TsDAHO, f. 62, op. 1, spr. 39, ark. 103.

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Notes  •  295 82 TsDAHO, f. 63, op. 1, spr. 85, ark. 53. 83 TsDAHO, f. 1, op. 22, spr. 61, ark. 52. 84 TsDAHO, f. 1, op. 22, spr. 82, ark. 16. 85 TsDAHO, f. 62, op. 1, spr. 533, ark. 44–45. 86 TsDAHO, f. 62, op. 1, spr. 1308, ark. 30. 87 Slepyan, Stalin’s Guerrillas, 235. 88 Interview with Vasyl Yermolenko, LAAG. 89 TsDAHO, f. 1, op. 22, spr. 66, ark. 48. 90 Ibid., ark. 55. 91 F. Sołomian-Łoc, Getto i gwiazdy (Warsaw, 1993), 114. Cited in Motyka, Ukrain´ska partyzantka, 241. 92 TsDAHO, f. 64, op. 1, spr. 59, ark. 154. 93 Interview conducted on 3 November 2008 with Aleksei Artamonov (b. 1918) in Kyiv, stored in LAAG 94 TsDAHO, f. 62, op. 1, spr. 40, ark. 149. 95 TsDAHO, f. 77, op. 1, spr. 3, ark. 109 zv. For data on the Chernihiv region, see also TsDAHO, f. 62, op. 2, spr. 113, ark. 107. For Banderite reports on the situation in Zhytomyr oblast, see TsDAVO, f. 3833, op. 1, spr. 92, ark. 38. For data on the Belarusian SSR, see TsDAVO, f. 3833, op. 1, spr. 116, ark. 1. 96 Boiarchuk, Trahediia Staroï Rafalivky. 97 TsDAHO, f. 65, op. 1, spr. 38, ark. 11. 98 TsDAVO, f. 3833, op. 1, spr. 129, ark. 59. For similar information from the Soviet side, see TsDAHO, f. 166, op. 3, spr. 374, ark. 7. 99 TsDAVO, f. 3833, op. 1, spr. 157, ark. 23. For data on the Lviv region, see TsDAVO, f. 3833, op. 1, spr. 126, ark. 65. 100 TsDAHO, f. 62, op. 1, spr. 295, ark. 69–71. 101 TsDAHO, f. 240, op. 1, spr. 3, ark. 51–53. 102 HDA SBU, f. 60, op. 1, spr. 83518, ark. 122 zv. 103 Ibid., ark. 99 ta zv. 104 M. Dzhilas [Milovan Djilas], Razgovory so Stalinym (Frankfurt am Mein, 1970), 89–91. 105 “‘Proidet desiatok let, i eti vstrechi ne vosstanovish′ uzhe v pamiati…’: Dnevnik V. A. Mal′sheva, 1937–1951, zapis′ ot 28 marta 1945 g.”, Istochnik, no. 5 (1997), 127.

Chapter Seven

1 2 3 4

TsDAHO, f. 64, op. 1, spr. 59, ark. 23–24. TsDAHO, f. 62, op. 1, spr. 41, ark. 84. Ibid., ark. 92. Ibid., ark. 79–80.

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296  •  Stalin’s Commandos 5 Ibid. 6 TsDAHO, f. 1, op. 22, spr. 66, ark. 49. 7 Ibid., ark. 58. 8 TsDAHO, f. 62, op. 1, spr. 1271, ark. 112. 9 Organy Gosudarstvennoi bezopasnosti SSSR, vol. IV-2, doc. 1554:215–18. 10 TsDAHO, f. 65, op. 1, spr. 26, ark. 182. 11 TsDAHO, f. 62, op. 1, spr. 1308, ark. 221. 12 TsDAHO, f. 62, op. 1, spr. 1330, ark. 15. 13 Ibid., ark. 18. 14 TsDAHO, f. 64, op. 1, spr. 59, ark. 133. 15 Ibid., ark. 140. 16 RGASPI, f. 69, op. 1. spr. 585, l. 3. 17 TsDAHO, f. 63, op. 1, spr. 45, ark. 54. 18 Ibid., ark. 58. 19 Ibid., ark. 66. 20 Ibid., ark. 72. 21 TsDAHO, f. 1, op. 22, spr. 58, ark. 44. 22 TsDAHO, f. 62, op. 5, spr. 107, ark. 85, 87. 23 TsDAHO, f. 62, op. 1, spr. 1330, ark. 162. 24 HDA SBU, Spr. 75129 fp. 25 TsDAHO, f. 62, op. 1, spr. 37, ark. 153. 26 TsDAHO, f. 62, op. 1, spr. 1357, ark. 17. 27 TsDAHO, f. 62, op. 1, spr. 1330, ark. 90. 28 TsDAHO, f. 62, op. 1, spr. 38, ark. 23, 24. 29 TsDAHO, f. 62, op. 1, spr. 40, ark. 43. 30 TsDAHO, f. 62, op. 1, spr. 38, ark. 26. 31 TsDAHO, f. 62, op. 1, spr. 37, ark. 10. 32 Ibid., ark. 38. 33 Ibid., ark. 39, 40. 34 Ibid., ark. 42. 35 TsDAHO, f. 62, op. 1, spr. 1289, ark. 160–160 zv. 36 TsDAHO, f. 66, op. 1, spr. 42, ark. 27. 37 TsDAHO, f. 62, op. 1, spr. 102, ark. 5. 38 V. Hinda, “Shtabny shury zhyrily na kharchakh i rechakh partizaniv”, Vysokyj zamok, 10 December 2010, located at http://wz.lviv.ua/pages. php?ac=arch&atid=88254. 39 Ibid. 40 These figures are based on: Kentii and Lozyts′kyi, Viina bez poshchady, 338, 339. 41 TsDAHO, f. 62, op. 1, spr. 1, ark. 48. 42 V. Shunievych, “Ya prosil vzryvchatki pobolshe, a oni mne bab prislali!”, 18 June 2007, located at http://president.org.ua/news/news-162370. 43 TsDAHO, f. 62, op. 1, spr. 40, ark. 118.

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Notes  •  297 44 TsDAHO, f. 62, op. 1, spr. 1308, ark. 40. 45 TsDAHO, f. 62, op. 1, spr. 40, ark. 43. 46 Ibid., ark. 45. 47 TsDAHO, f. 62, op. 1, spr. 1308, ark. 49. 48 TsDAHO, f. 62, op. 1, spr. 40, ark. 20–21. 49 TsDAHO, f. 62, op. 1, spr. 1439, ark. 12. 50 TsDAHO, f. 64, op. 1, spr. 59, ark, 75. 51 TsDAHO, f. 62, op. 1, spr. 1530, ark. 9. 52 These figures are based on: Ukraïna partyzans′ka, 88–91, 110–11. 53 Kentii and Lozyts′kyi, Viina bez poshchady, 335. 54 TsDAHO, f. 66, op. 1, spr. 42, ark. 81. 55 TsDAHO, f. 62, op. 1, spr. 37, ark. 100. 56 TsDAHO, f. 62, op. 1, spr. 40, ark. 150. 57 TsDAHO, f. 63, op. 1, spr. 45, ark. 47. 58 Ibid., ark. 48. 59 TsDAHO, f. 62, op. 1, spr. 1439, ark. 181. 60 TsDAHO, f. 64, op. 1, spr. 59, ark. 36. 61 TsDAHO, f. 166, op. 3, spr. 374, ark. 61–62. 62 Kentii and Lozyts′kyi, Viina bez poshchady, 168. 63 TsDAHO, f. 1, op. 22, spr. 61, ark. 17. 64 TsDAHO, f. 62, op. 1, spr. 52, ark. 21. 65 TsDAHO, f. 62, op. 1, spr. 1330, ark. 61. 66 Starinov, Zapiski diversanta, 432. 67 TsDAHO, f. 62, op. 1, spr. 1289, ark. 52. 68 TsDAHO, f. 105, op. 1, spr. 12, ark. 46. 69 TsDAHO, f. 64, op. 1, spr. 60, ark. 74. 70 TsDAHO, f. 62, op. 1, spr. 52, ark. 20. 71 TsDAHO, f. 105, op. 1, spr. 12, ark. 49 zv. 72 TsDAHO, f. 105, op. 1, spr. 12, ark. 55. 73 TsDAHO, f. 62, op. 1, spr. 52, ark. 2 ta zv. 74 Kentii and Lozyts′kyi, Viina bez poshchady, 147. 75 Ibid., 168. 76 TsDAHO, f. 62, op. 1, spr. 1, ark. 35. 77 Armstrong, Soviet Partisans, 418. 78 TsDAHO, f. 1, op. 22, spr. 133, ark. 25. 79 TsDAHO, f. 1, op. 22, spr. 133, ark. 6–7. 80 HDA SBU, f. 62, op. 3, spr. 43, ark. 46. 81 HDA SBU, f. 62, op. 3, spr. 71, ark. 52. 82 HDA SBU, f. 62, op. 3, spr. 43, ark. 50. 83 HDA SBU, f. 62, op. 3, spr. 71, ark. 205–9. 84 TsDAHO, f. 1, op. 22, spr. 448, ark. 109. 85 Derzhavnyj arkhiv Odes’koj oblasti (DAOO), f. 92 (st.), op. 1 (st.), spr. 13 (st.), ark. 20 (st.).

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298  •  Stalin’s Commandos 86 GARF, f. 9414. Form of A. Soldatenko, 25 May 1938. 87 Ibid. Form of A. Soldatenko, 17 September 1939. This document was graciously offered to me by Nikita Okhotin. 88 TsDAHO, f. 1, op. 22, spr. 448, ark. 7–8, 104, 105, 107, 109. 89 DAOO, f. 492 (st.), op. 1 (st.), spr. 13 (st.), ark. 23 (st.). 90 HDA SBU, f. 62, op. 3, spr. 72, ark. 11. 91 TsDAHO, f. 62, op. 1, spr. 40, ark. 48. 92 Ibid., ark. 119. 93 TsDAHO, f. 62, op. 1, spr. 533, ark. 45. 94 TsDAHO, f. 1, op. 22, spr. 61, ark. 17. 95 TsDAHO, f. 64, op. 1, spr. 59, ark. 14–15. 96 TsDAHO, f. 62, op. 1, spr. 52, ark. 20. 97 V. Hinda, “Shtabny shury”, Vysokyj zamok. 98 Interview with Vasyl Yermolenko, LAAG. 99 TsDAHO, f. 92, op. 1, spr. 3, ark. 41. 100 TsDAHO, f. 92, op. 1, spr. 20, ark. 6. 101 TsDAHO, f. 1, op. 22, spr. 67, ark. 85. 102 TsDAHO, f. 63, op. 1, spr. 85, ark. 28-29. 103 TsDAHO, f. 62, op. 1, spr. 1340, ark. 212. 104 TsDAHO, f. 326, op. 1, spr. 22, ark. 87. 105 A. F. Fiodorov, Podpolnyj obkom dejstvuet (Moscow, 1955), passim. 106 TsDAHO, f. 62, op. 1, spr. 1548, ark. 214. 107 TsDAHO, f. 66, op. 1, spr. 42, ark. 19 zv. 108 TsDAHO, f. 62, op. 1, spr. 279, ark. 75. 109 Ibid., ark. 76. 110 TsDAVO, f. 3833, op. 1, spr. 137, ark. 5.

Conclusion 1 A. V. Kentii, Ukraïns′ka povstans′ka armiia v 1942–1943 rr. (Kyiv, 1999); idem, Ukraïns′ka povstans′ka armiia v 1944–1945 rr. (Kyiv, 1999); idem, Narys borot′by OUN-UPA v Ukraïni (Kyiv, 1999). And Grzegorz Motyka, Ukrain´ska partyzantka 1942-1960. Działalnos´ć Organizacji Ukrain´skich Nacjonalistów (OUN) i Ukrain´skiej Powstan´czej Armii (UPA) (Warsaw, 2006). For information about the Home Army in Western Ukraine, see: Wincenty Romanowski, ZWZ-AK na Wołyniu 1939-1944 (Lublin, 1993); Jerzy Wegierski, W lwowskiej Armii Krajowej (Warsaw, 1989); idem, Armia Krajowa w Okre˛gach Stanisławów i Tarnopol (Cracow, 1996). 2 Viedienieiev and Bystrukhin, “Povstans′ka rozvidka diie tochno i vidvazhno”, 239. 3 Bogdan Musiał, Sowjetische Partisanen in Weissrussland. Innenansichten aus dem Gebiet Baranovici. 1941-1944. Eine Dokumentation (Munich,

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Notes  •  299 2004); idem, Sowjetische Partisanen. Mythos und Wirklichkeit (Paderborn, 2009), Chapter 8; E. Voloshin, “Partizany ubivali mirnykh zhitelej?”, Komsomolskaja Pravda v Belorussii, 28 September 2007. 4 O. Roman’ko, Sovetskij legion Gitlera. Grazhdane SSSR v rjadakh Vermakhta i SS (Moscow, 2006), 171. 5 I. Dereiko, “Mistsevi formuvannia nimets′koï armiï ta politsiï u Raikhs­ komisariati ‘Ukraïna,’ (1941–1944 roky)”, dissertation (Kyiv, 2006), 145. 6 TsDAHO, f. 97, op. 1, spr. 1, ark. 94. 7 Klaus Jochen Arnold, Die Wehrmacht und die Besatzungspolitik, 480. 8 Slepyan, Stalin’s Guerillas, 104. Similar idea on pp. 9, 121. 9 Motyka, Ukrain´ska partyzantka, 298–414. 10 TsDAHO, f. 66, op. 1, spr. 42, ark. 46. 11 B. Sokolov “Ukhodili v pokhod partizany”, Radio Svoboda. “Tsena podedy”, 13 November 2004. 12 Litopys UPA, n.s., vol. 4, 187. 13 TsDAHO, f. 63, op. 1, spr. 4, ark. 140. 14 Voslenski, Nomenklatura, Chapter 8: “Klass-parazit”. 15 BA-MA, RH 22/104, Bl. 111. See also: Viedienieiev and Bystrukhin, Mech i tryzub, 299 16 T. Tsarevskaja, “Ukrajnskie povstantsty alkogol’ ne upotrebliajut!”, Rodina, 7 (1999), 71–74. 17 Viedienieiev and Bystrukhin, Mech i tryzub, 209. 18 TsDAHO, f. 66, op. 1, spr. 42, ark. 82. 19 Litopys UPA, n.s., vol. 4, 186. 20 For the biography of UPA officers see P. Sodol’, Ukraïns′ka povstancha armiia, 1943-1949. Dovidnik. vols. 1–2 (NY-Ternopil’, 1994–95), passim. 21 I. Bilas, Represyvno-karal′na systema v Ukraïni, 2:365–66. 22 TsDAHO, f. 62, op. 1, spr. 275, ark. 55. 23 TsDAVO, f. 3833, op. 1, spr. 129, ark. 13. 24 Simon Sebag Montefiore, Stalin: Am Hof des roten Zaren (Munich, 2005), passim. 25 I. V. Stalin, Sochinenija, vol. 7 (Moscow, 1947), 287. 26 Edmund Dmitrów, “Der polnische ‘Historikerstreit’ zur Armia Krajowa”, in Die polnische Heimatarmee. Geschichte und Mythos der Armia Krajowa seit dem Zweitem Weltkrieg Im Auftrag des MGFA herausgegeben von Bernhard Chiari unter Mitarbeit von Jerzy Kochanowski (Munich, 2003), 835. 27 BAB, R 6/310, Bl. 43. 28 I. N. Shkadov, Geroi Sovetskogo Sojuza: Istoriko-statisticheskij sbornik (Moscow, 1984), 163. 29 Alexander Brakel, “‘Das allergefaehrlichste ist die Wut der Bauern’: Die Versorgung der Partisanen und ihr Verhaeltnis zur Zivilbevoelkerung. Eine Fallstudie zum Gebiet Baranowicze 1941–1944”, Vierteljahreshaefte fuer Zeitgeschichte, Sonderdruck aus Heft 3 (2007), 424.

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Bibliography  •  307 Orhanizatsiï ukraïns′kykh natsionalistiv ta Ukraïns′koï povstans′koï armiï, 1940– 1950 roky (Kyiv, 2006) — Mech i tryzub: Rozvidka i kontrrozvidka rukhu ukraïns′kykh natsionalistiv ta Ukraïns′koï povstans′koï armiï, 1920–1945 (Kyiv, 2006) Vinok bezsmertia: Knyha-memorial, ed. O. F. Fedorov, V. A. Maniak, et al. (Kyiv, 1987) Voennoplennyi sekretar′: povest′ o Paruire Airikiane (London, 1985) Voloshin, E., “Partizany ubivali mirnykh zhitelej?”, Komsomolskaja Pravda v Belorussii, 28 September 2007 Volyn and Polissia: UPA and Its Rear Line: 1943–1944: Documents and Materials, ed. O. Vovk and I. Pavlenko, Litopys UPA, n.s., vol. 2 (Kyiv; Toronto, 1999) Volyn, Polissia, Podillia: UPA and Its Rear Line 1944–1946; Documents and Materials, Litopys UPA, n.s., vol. 8 (Kyiv; Toronto, 2005) Voslenskii, M. S., Nomenklatura: Gospodstvuiushchii klass Sovetskogo Soiuza (Moscow, 1991) Zevelev, A. I., Kurlat, F. L., and Kozitskii, A. S., Nenavist′, spresovannaia v tol (Moscow, 1991) Zhirnov, E., “Za partizanami sokhranena zarabotnaia plata”, Kommersant vlast′, 28 November 2011

Publications in Latin Alphabet Armia Krajowa w dokumentach, 1939–1945, vols. 2–3 (Wroclaw; Warsaw; Cracow, 1990) Armstrong, John A., Soviet Partisans in World War II (Madison, 1964) Arnold, Klaus Jochen, Die Wehrmacht und die Besatzungspolitik in den besetzen Gebieten der Sowjetunion: Kriegführung und Radikalisierung im “Unternehmen Barbarossa” (Berlin, 2005) Berkhoff, Karel C., Harvest of Despair: Life and Death under Nazi Rule (Cambridge, MA, 2004) Brakel, Alexander, “‘Das allergefaehrlichste ist die Wut der Bauern’. Die Versorgung der Partisanen und ihr Verhaeltnis zur Zivilbevoelkerung. Eine Fallstudie zum Gebiet Baranowicze 1941–1944”, Vierteljahreshaefte fuer Zeitgeschichte, Sonderdruck aus Heft 3 (2007) Dallin, Alexander, Deutsche Herrschaft in Russland, 1941–1945: eine Studie über Besatzungspolitik, 14th edn (Düsseldorf, 1958) Dutu, Alesandru, Dobre, Florica, and Loghin, Leonida, Armata Româna˘ în al Doilea Ra˘zboi Mondial 1941–1945: dict¸ionar enciclopedic (Bucharest, 1999) Hesse, Erich, Der sowjetrussische Partisanenkrieg 1941 bis 1944 im Spiegel deutscher Kampfanweisungen und Befehle (Göttingen; Zürich; Frankfurt, 1969)

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308  •  Stalin’s Commandos Juchniewicz, Mieczysław, Na Wschód od Bugu: Polacy w walce antyhitlerowskiej na ziemiach ZSRR 1941–1945 (Warsaw, 1985) Kister, Anna Graz´ina, Meldunki sytuacyjne Komendy Okre˛gu Lublin AK, mai–lipiec 1944 (Lublin, 1998) Klinkhammer, Lutz, “Der Partisanenkrieg der Wehrmacht 1941–1944”, in Die Wehrmacht: Mythos und Realitat, ed. Rolf Dieter Muller and Hans-Erich Volkmann (Munich, 1999), 815–36 Kuczyn´ska, Teresa, “Chciał dobrze, a został zaprzan´cem”, Przegla ˛d, 9 June 2005 Kunicki, Mikołaj, Pamie˛tnik “Muchy” (Warsaw, 1967) Montefiore, Simon Sebag, Stalin: Am Hof des roten Zaren (Munich, 2005) Motyka, Grzegorz, Ukrain´ska partyzantka 1942–1960. Działalnos´ć Organizacji Ukrain´skich Nacjonalistów (OUN) i Ukrain´skiej Powstan´czej Armii (UPA) (Warsaw, 2006) Musiał, Bogdan, Sowjetische Partisanen in Weissrussland. Innenansichten aus dem Gebiet Baranovici. 1941–1944. Eine Dokumentation (Munich, 2004) — Sowjetische Partisanen: Mythos und Wirklichkeit (Paderborn, 2009) Okupacja i ruch oporu w dzienniku Hansa Franka, 1939–1945, comp. and ed. Lucjan Dobroszyn´ski et al., vol. 2 (Warsaw, 1979) Overy, Richard, Russia’s War (London, 1999) Paczyn´ska, Irena, O latach wspólnej walki: Obywatele radzieccy w ruchu partyzanckim na ziemi kieleckiej i krakowskiej (Warsaw, 1978) Pottgiesser, Hans, Die Deutsche Reichsbahn im Ostfeldzug, 1939–1944 (Stuttgart, 1960) Przez uroczyska Polesia i Wołynia: wspomnienia polaków uczestników radzieckiego ruchu partyzanckiego, ed. Zofia Dróz˙dz˙-Satanowska (Warsaw, 1962) Romanowski, Wincenty, ZWZ-AK na Wołyniu 1939–1944 (Lublin, 1993) Slepyan, Kenneth, Stalin’s Guerrillas: Soviet Partisans in World War II (Lawrence, KA, 2006) Sołomian-Łoc, F., Getto i gwiazdy (Warsaw, 1993) Studzin´ski, Tadeusz, Pie˛ć mostów i inne akcje: Wspomnienia partyzanckie oficera Armii Krajowej (Cracow, 1992) The Struggle against the UPA and the Nationalist Underground: Informational Documents of the Central Committee of the Communist Party (Bolshevik) of Ukraine, Party obkoms, NKVD-MVD, MGB-KGB, Litopys UPA, n.s., vol. 4: 1943–1945 (Kyiv; Toronto, 2002–03) Turowski, Jósef, Poz˙oga: Walki 27 Wołyn´skiej Dywizji AK (Warsaw, 1990) Wegierski, Jerzy, W lwowskiej Armii Krajowej (Warsaw, 1989) — Armia Krajowa w Okre˛gach Stanisławów i Tarnopol (Cracow, 1996) Weiner, Amir, Making Sense of War: The Second World War and the Fate of the Bolshevik Revolution (Princeton, 2001) Wilhem, Hans-Heinrich, “Der SD und die Kirchen in den besetzten Ostgebieten 1941/42”, Militärgeschichtliche Mitteilungen, no. 1 (1981)

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Index anti-Semitism (Judaeophobia), see Jews; Holocaust Armia Krajowa (Polish Home Army), 1, 4, 21, 27, 53, 59, 61–2, 70–2, 75, 81–2, 110, 121, 123, 130–3, 136–7, 157, 169, 170–1, 176, 178, 181, 183, 189, 253–63 AUCP(B) see Communist Party Azerbaijanis, 149 Bach-Zelewski, Erich von dem, 55 bacteriological warfare, 140–6 Bandera, Stepan, 153 radical “youths” headed by, 66 see also Ukrainian nationalists, OUN and UPA Behma, Vasyl, 33, 93, 137, 162, 237 Belarus, Belarusian SSR, 4, 6, 11, 17, 27, 35, 41–4, 46–51, 53, 55–7, 61–2, 67, 72, 88–9, 91–2, 98, 105, 109, 121, 132, 146–7, 149, 158–9, 165, 167, 174, 177–8, 189, 194, 196, 201, 205, 217, 223–5, 230, 254, 257, 263 Belarusians, Belarus population, Belarusian soviet partisans, 6, 17, 35, 39, 43–4, 48, 62, 88–9, 150, 158–60, 167–8, 170, 205, 224–5, 236, 254, 257, 263 Beria, Lavrentii, 11, 21, 195, 241 Bessarabia, 5–6, 63, 134 see also Moldavia

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Bovkun, Ivan, 240, 242–4 Briansk, Briansk region, 19, 33, 46, 55, 113, 162, 179, 216, 223 Brynsky, Anton, 31, 33, 219, 220 Buh (Southern), the 6, 74, 110, 251 Buh (Western), the 117 Bukovina (Northern), 5–6, 56, 63–4, 236 Bulba, Taras (Borovets), 23, 72, 181, 254, 275 men 104, 150 cannibalism, 245–6 Carpathian raid, 98, 179, 190, 198, 210, 249 see also Kovpak Carpathians, the, 56–7, 61, 76, 174–5, 214, 233, 236, 247 see also Bukovina; Galicia; Transcarpathia, Transcarpathian Ukraine Cherkasy, 187 Chernihiv, 38, 41, 54, 200, 211 Chernihiv Oblast, 27, 46, 48, 54, 58, 85, 90, 95–7, 100, 102, 113, 151, 187, 196, 242, 250 Chernihov-Volyn unit, commanded by Oleksii Fedorov, 4, 56, 70, 86, 109–10, 120, 123, 148, 175, 178, 182, 197, 201, 207, 219, 222, 228, 239, 241, 247–8, 250 Chernivtsi, oblast, 56, 187, 236 see also Bukovina (Northern)

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Partisans of the Chernihiv-Volyn unit in the fall of 1943. Oleksii Federov is in the centre; to his left is Anton Brynsky.

Vasyl Yermolenko, a veteran of the Vinnitsia unit, a resident of Pereliub village, Koriukivka raion, Chernihiv oblast. This photograph was taken from a video recording made 27 February 2007.

Oleksandra Shevchenko, a witness to the events of the occupation and resident of Rudnya village, Koriukivka raion, Chernihiv oblast. This photograph was taken from a video recording made 27 February 2007.

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Joseph Stalin, General Secretary of the CC AUCP(B) (1922–53), head of the Supreme Commander-inChief’s General Headquarters, and USSR People’s Commissar of Defence (1941–45).

Lavrentii Beria, USSR People’s Commissar, since 1946 – Minister of Internal Affairs (1938–53).

Panteleimon Ponomarenko, First Secretary of the CPB CC (1938–47) and head of the TsShPD (1942–44).

Nikita Khrushchev, First Secretary of the Ukrainian CP(B) CC (1938–47).

Serhii Savchenko, Acting People’s Commissar of Internal Affairs of the Ukrainian SSR (1941–43).

Tymofii Strokach, Deputy People’s Commissar of Internal Affairs of the Ukrainian SSR (1940–42) and head of the UShPD (1942–44).

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Ukrainian Headquarters of the Partisan Movement (UShPD), 1944. Tymofii Strokach is in the centre.

Sydir Kovpak, commander of the Sumy unit, twice Hero of the Soviet Union.

Oleksii Fedorov, commander of Aleksandr Saburov, the Chernihiv-Volyn unit, twice commander of the Zhytomyr Hero of the Soviet Union. unit, Hero of the Soviet Union.

Ivan Kopenkin, commander of the Poltava Budenny Detachment, Hero of the Soviet Union

Mikhail Naumov, commander of the Ukrainian Partisan Cavalry unit, Hero of the Soviet Union.

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Mykola Popudrenko, commander of the Chernihiv unit, Hero of the Soviet Union.

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Ivan Bovkun, commander of the Chernihiv “For the Motherland!” unit, Hero of the Soviet Union.

Mykola Taranushchenko, Andrii Hrabchak, commander commander of the of the Beria unit, Hero of the Kotsiubynsky Chernihiv unit. Soviet Union.

Stepan Malikov, commander of the Zhytomyr unit.

Anton Odukha, commander of the Mikhailov KamianetsPodilsky unit, Hero of the Soviet Union.

Yakiv Melnyk, commander of the Vinnytsia unit.

Vasyl Behma, commander of Ryvne unit No. 1.

Leonid Ivanov, commander of the Lenin Volyn unit.

Ivan Fedorov, commander of Ryvne unit No. 2.

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Józef Sobesiak, commander of the Polish “Grünwald” Partisan Brigade.

Robert Satanowski, command- Mikhail Shukaev, commander of the Stalin unit er of the Partisan Brigade “Jeszcze Polska nie zgine˛ła” (“Poland has not yet perished”)

Stepan Oleksenko, commander of the Kamianets- Ivan Khytrychenko, Podilsky unit commander of the Kyiv Khrushchev unit.

Petro Korotchenko, commander of the Molotov Poltava unit.

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Ivan Shitov, commander of the Khrushchev Ternopil unit.

Mykola Taratuta, commander Petro Vershyhora, commander of the Shchors Rivne unit of the Kovpak 1st Ukrainian Partisan Division, Hero of the Soviet Union.

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Ivan Ilichev, head of the Red Army Headquarters Main Intelligence Directorate (GRU), August to 23 October 1942; thereafter, head of the USSR People’s Commissariat of Defence GRU to July 1945

Fedor Kuznetsov, head of the Red Army Headquarters Intelligence Directorate (RU) (1942–45)

Anton Brynsky, commander of the Partisan Reconnaissance Brigade, Hero of the Soviet Union.

Kuzma Hnidash, deputy commander of the “Tsentr” (“Centre”) Partisan Reconnaissance unit, Hero of the Soviet Union.

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Pavel Sudoplatov, head of the 4th Directorate of the USSR NKVD (renamed NKGB on 14 April 1943), 18 January 1942 to 22 May 1945.

Dmitrii Medvedev, commander of the USSR NKVD–NKGB Partisan Detachment “Pobediteli” (“Victors”), Hero of the Soviet Union.

Evgenii Mirkovsky, commander of the USSR NKVD–NKGB Partisan Detachment “Khodoki” (“Walkers”), Hero of the Soviet Union. Post-war photograph.

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Mykola Prokopiuk, commander of the USSR NKVD–NKGB Partisan Detachment “Ohotniki” (“Hunters”), Hero of the Soviet Union. Post-war photograph.

Viktor Karasev, commander of the USSR NKVD–NKGB Partisan Detachment “Olimp” (“Olympus”), Hero of the Soviet Union.

Vladimir Molodtsov, commander of the USSR NKVD–NKGB Partisan Detachment “Fort”, Hero of the Soviet Union.

Viktor Liagin, commander of the USSR NKVD–NKGB Partisan Detachment “Marshrutniki” (“Itinerants”), Hero of the Soviet Union.

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Tymofii Strokach bids farewell to soldiers of the 1st Ukrainian Partisan NKVD Regiment, which is departing for the Wehrmacht rear. Kyiv, August 1941.

Regiment embarking on a train. Kyiv, August 1941.

Ukrainian partisan in a railway carriage. Kyiv, August 1941.

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The Sumy unit forces a crossing of the Horyn River during the Stalin raid at the end of 1942.

Partisans of the Shchors Zhytomyr unit assault Ignatopil village, 1943.

Saburov’s partisans execute collaborationist prisoners in Polissia, summer 1943. This photograph was taken from a motion picture film strip (TsDKFFAU, arch. No. 2191).

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A detachment of Popudrenko’s Chernihiv unit crosses a swamp, 1943.

Partisan territory in the Zhytomyr area, 1943.

Sydir Kovpak, end of 1942.

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Ivan Syromolotny, a representative of the CP(B)U CC, and Semen Rudnev, commissar of the Sumy unit, winter 1942/43.

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Meeting between command staff from several partisan formations and UShPD workers and representatives of the CP(B)U CC, June 1943.

The Sumy unit during the Carpathian raid.

A group of partisans from Kovpak’s unit. From left to right: V. Voitsehovych (chief of staff of the Sumy unit starting August 1943), M. Pavlovsky (the unit’s supply manager), H. Bazima (chief of staff of the unit until August 1943), F. Gorkunov (chief of staff of the Shalyginsk Detachment of the Sumy unit), K. Rudnev (the commissar’s brother), and R. Rudnev (the commissar’s son).

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Semen Rudnev, commissar of the Sumy unit, decides what direction to go next, 1943.

Sumy unit mobile hospital.

Partisans of Saburov’s Zhytomyr unit listening to a phonograph, 1943.

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A group of commanders from the Chernihiv-Volyn unit during a rest period near Lobna, Volyn, 1943. From left to right: Akim Mikhailov (commissar of the Shchors detachment), Fedor Kravchenko (commander of the Bohun detachment), Ivan Kudinov (the unit’s secretary of the party organization).

UShPD head Tymofii Strokach (second from the right, top row) and Demian Korotchenko, secretary of the CP(B)U CC (second from the left, top row) with partisans of the Khrushchev unit, commanded by Ivan Shitov, June 1943.

Artillery crew from Verchyhhora’s 1st Ukrainian Kovpak Partisan Division, 1944.

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Aleksandr Soldatenko, a former NKVD career officer, commanded one of the partisan formations in the Odesa catacombs in 1941–42. Pre-war photo.

Corpses of Soldatenko and his cohabitor Elena Malitskaya, spring 1942; exposed arm and leg bones are the result of the meat having been consumed by partisans.

Partisans who engaged in cannibalism, captured by Romanian police after emerging from the Dalnitskaya catacomb.

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Doctor Fedor Mikhailov (1898–1942), a GRU agent who used typhus fever against the Germans. Hero of the Soviet Union (1965). Pre-war photo.

Ignat Kuzovkov, commissar of the Mikhailov unit in 1943–44, chief of the agent network at the Slavuta POW Camp, 1941–42.

A group of scouts from the Lenin Volyn unit receive an assignment.

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A cavalry squadron of the Molotov Poltava unit departs for Kukuriki village, Holovna raion, Volyn oblast, on an operation against Ukrainian nationalists, 1944.

Partisans chat with village residents. Kovel raion, Volyn oblast, early 1944.

Reconnaissance brigade in Volyn. Anton Brynsky is in the centre, wearing a white half-length fur coat.

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Partisans of the Chernihiv-Volyn unit in the fall of 1943. Oleksii Federov is in the centre; to his left is Anton Brynsky.

Vasyl Yermolenko, a veteran of the Vinnitsia unit, a resident of Pereliub village, Koriukivka raion, Chernihiv oblast. This photograph was taken from a video recording made 27 February 2007.

Oleksandra Shevchenko, a witness to the events of the occupation and resident of Rudnya village, Koriukivka raion, Chernihiv oblast. This photograph was taken from a video recording made 27 February 2007.

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