Myth vs Reality: Soviet Penal Units

We thought it would be better than a prison camp. We didn't realize at the time that it was just a death sentence. A unit, armed with nothing but rifles, rushes over the open ground to storm a battery of entrenched German guns. Their battalions are forlorn, desperate, and soul-destroyed. Its fighting men are no different. Haggard faces, sweat-soaked tunics, and hollow, haunted eyes. Nonetheless, they fight with reverence and love for their homes. A Strafnik, a member of the blighted Soviet penal units, does not run away. Penal units existed in all major European armies in the second half of the 19th century. The French Foreign Legion, for instance, subjected soldiers sentenced to penal service to extensive drills, grueling work, and extensive punishments. Leon Trotsky was the first to send penal units to the front lines, generally in the most dangerous circumstances. In July 1942, Stalin revived this system, officially basing it on Hitler's formation of penal units just a few months before. The Soviet defense against Operation Barbarossa had been nothing short of an unmitigated disaster. The Red Army was left severely battered. Desertion and depletion of manpower undermined the defense of the USSR, which was hanging on for dear life. After the strategic city of Rostov fell to the Germans and the Caucasus lay open, Stalin took drastic measures. His Order 227, No Step Back, sought to restore discipline in the faltering Red Army. The order contained rousing language, which aimed to hammer the significant role they played into the consciousness of each Red Army man and soldier. For those not swayed by language alone, the penal battalion awaited those who lacked the patriotism and duty to fight for their country. Here, men would have the opportunity to redeem their crimes against the motherland by blood. These men were then pressed into service as strafnik, a catch-all term that included two types of penal soldiers, penal companies and penal battalions. Penal battalions were exclusively for Red Army officers who had infringed discipline by cowardice or lack of resolution. Penal companies consisted of low-ranking officers, rank-and-file soldiers, and gulag prisoners. For many prisoners in the gulag system, penal service was attractive. One soldier recounts, lots of people asked to go. There was enthusiasm for the front even among prisoners. Prisoners had the chance to make good on past mistakes and return to Soviet society as regular citizens. Additionally, many who faced sentencing for severe crimes had an easy choice. It was either penal service or the firing squad. Standard conversion rates for prison sentences to penal battalions even existed. Still, morale in the penal battalions was low. Many served at best out of pragmatism and self-preservation, and at worst, out of the perceived opportunity to immediately desert and join the Germans. Newly constituted penal units were integrated into the Red Army in various ways. Battalions were considerably larger than companies. About 360 men served in them, compared to just 150 in the companies. Both penal units had small permanent staff, which was supposed to come from the most staunch commanders and commissars who have distinguished themselves in combat. Although most commanders were shocked to be assigned to a penal unit, they now had to command unpredictable, regularly untrustworthy soldiers, while the disgust that regular soldiers and civilians felt toward the Stravniki left commanders dealing with the internal morale problems. Additionally, these units had to deal with surveillance from the special SMERSH agency, who attached officers to penal units to monitor them. Stalin deliberately placed penal soldiers in the most dangerous sections of the front. Often, that meant performing exceptionally dangerous missions. Frontal assaults, first-line defense, plugging enemy breakthroughs, rearguard fights, capturing bridgeheads, and feint attacks were a daily reality. Whereas regular formations occasionally performed such missions, penal units performed them constantly. As a result, the casualty rates among penal units were extraordinarily high. Individual testimonies put the figures at 90, 92, and sometimes 93%. One company officer wrote, Our company lasted one or two, rarely three, serious engagements. Virtually nobody survived for more than a month during offensives. Particularly callous officers viewed the soldiers in penal companies as pure cannon fodder. After arriving in cattle cars, escorted by the NKVD, they were sent forward without artillery barrage or other support. A platoon commander recalled that, No one was concerned how many penal soldiers died. Their actions had to reduce the casualties of regular units. These officers took Stalin's notion of redeeming their crimes with blood quite literally. Although they were rarely unarmed, penal companies were undoubtedly deliberately put in near-impossible situations with limited, generally inadequate means. Often, they had to fight against insurmountable odds with little more than rifles and bayonets. Commanders also varied in their levels of callousness. Some deliberately sent penal companies through minefields even when the equipment to clear it was readily available. Some commanders, however, showed more regard for the lives of their penal soldiers. They recognized that many of these men didn't deserve the punishment they'd been given. In typical Stalinist fashion, Order 227 fostered a culture of fear and scapegoating, where zealots sought out the slightest excuse to denounce others. 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This process of waiting and exposure to the elements is a quiet but powerful tribute, symbolic of the hours those soldiers spent waiting and exposed on the shores. This limited collection is available now, but once gone, it's gone. If this piece of living history speaks to you, use the link in the description below and secure yours today. Soldiers were punished for minor infractions, one for complementing a German machine gun, another for preparing a poor meal, and even a decorated officer for failing to return the rations, food, and vodka issued for a soldier killed on an important mission. Civilians weren't spared either. A factory engineer was sentenced to penal service for simply being late to work. Though penalties were officially meant to be individual, Stalin ordered collective punishment in at least one case. After the 214th Cavalry Regiment lost its banner in combat, the entire unit was converted into a penal formation. Penal units were subjected to intense disciplinary measures. Any Strafnig, who was found guilty of self-mutilation or desertion, was subject to summary execution. One of the most famous disciplinary measures was the implementation of barrier units, which operated in the rear of penal units. They were ordered to shoot in place panic mongers and cowards, and thus helped the honest soldiers of the division execute their duty to the motherland. Barrier units were not a new concept to the Soviets, having first been created by Trotsky during the Russian Civil War. Order 227 simply revived them. Unlike their predecessors in the Cheka, these new barrier units were generally composed of NKVD troops, who remained behind the front line to prevent unauthorized retreats. Memoirs of penal companies paint a haunting picture of these barrier units. They were forced to run forward towards certain death, or forced to stay put while facing certain death, with guns pointed at them from both the front and the rear. These troops became the only ones during the entirety of the Second World War to, on a large scale, fire at their own comrades. Nonetheless, these blocking units were relatively rare compared to the total size of the Red Army. Many veterans claim they never even encountered blocking units, especially those who served in the penal battalions. After all, not all penal units fit the mold of poorly trained cannon fodder with outdated rifles in their hands and modern ones behind their backs. It's important to remember that the penal battalions were entirely made up of demoted officers, who were generally among the most highly skilled and highly motivated units in the entire Red Army. Generally, they were well supplied in rations and arms, and would only be used on key sectors where the risks and the potential gains for the front commander were massive. These officers were especially motivated because when they got out of penal service, they would be restored to the regular army with their ranks fully intact. Given their high morale, Soviet commanders bestowed a lot of trust on penal battalions. In one case in 1944, a battalion spent five days behind German lines where they blew up several bridges and destroyed a divisional headquarters, despite having a clear opportunity to escape. Soviet penal forces were not just limited to the army. In the Navy and the Air Force, soldiers and low-ranking officers were also sentenced to penal service. These soldiers sometimes barely knew how to fire a machine gun or hold an anti-tank rifle when they were sent to the front. Many of these soldiers ended up in the army, but specialized penal squadrons were also organized, like in the Soviet Air Force, where the special 157th Fighter Aviation Regiment commanded 64 penal pilots until spring of 1943. Like the army, casualty rates among penal pilots were outrageously high. One pilot recalled how during the Battle of Stalingrad, the squadrons were sent to the most dangerous places, to the Volga Bridge crossings, to airfields and enemy tank concentrations. Only penal squadrons were sent to attack these targets. Despite difficult missions, Strafnik pilots performed remarkably, shooting down more than 400 aircraft in half a year. As you might be thinking, penal units varied greatly in how efficient they were. Some used specialized soldiers, like pilots and gunners, who performed very well. In the air, these men were highly effective. On the ground, however, Soviet command wasted valuable Strafnik troops as cannon fodder in the regular army. The specialized officer-based battalions were undoubtedly more effective for the success of the Red Army, simply because its ranks were made up of far more seasoned soldiers. Although their lives were valued cheaply, the presence of penal units in crucial battles like Stalingrad and in Berlin indicated their significance. But aside from their military effectiveness, penal battalions were also notable for their war crimes. Many Strafniks came from prisons, and quite a few of them were there for a very good reason. Atrocities among these units weren't uncommon, especially when it came to enemy POWs. For example, one officer reported in his memoir how one penal soldier bayoneted 15 prisoners in cold blood. The perpetrators were rarely punished. Soviet soldiers had several ways to escape penal service. Those who managed to survive were reinstated in the regular forces, or released into society as regular civilians, their slates wiped clean. Soldiers could also obtain pardons if they performed exceptionally well. Release from penal service depended heavily on the officer in charge. Some generals, like Konstantin Rokossovsky, were fairly generous with their pardons. In instances like this, an entire battalion was pardoned for heroism after a successful raid on the enemy's rear, despite suffering minimal casualties. Other generals were especially pedantic when it came to granting requests. Pavel Batov, who commanded the 65th Army, believed penal soldiers deserved their plight. Even when he was forced to sign a pardon, like for a penal soldier blowing up an enemy tank, only the soldier who fired the anti-tank weapon was pardoned, not the one loading it. The most common way to get out was through an injury. Regardless of the circumstances, a wounded soldier automatically secured a full pardon, discharge from the army with honors if the injury was severe, or transfer to the regular army if the wound was small. Logically, some soldiers tried to use this way out by mutilating themselves. If they were caught, they would either be executed on the spot, or, if the wound wasn't too severe, serve additional terms in their penal unit. Data from one penal company showed that about 24% of all men who passed through it between 1942 and 1945 were killed, 58% wounded, and 14% pardoned. Only 3% were released after they served their terms, and another 1% ended up missing or deserting. After their release from penal service, the soldiers could, and did, get decorated. Although they received fewer and lower-ranking decorations than regulars, one soldier, Vladimir Karpov, received the Hero of the Soviet Union, the highest Soviet decoration. Many decorated soldiers continued to serve in penal units until they were wounded or killed. Only in the officer-comprised special assault battalions was a decoration a way out. By 1945, at least 1.5 million men had served in penal units, across 15 battalions, and over 300 penal companies. For most, their liberation came at the cost of a grave injury, death, or the abolition of the penal system after the end of the war.