Fronts (as well as armies, except an air force army) were directed by a Military Council… [A military council] consisted of the military commander, two members, chief of staff, artillery and air force commanders…
To implement a commander’s decision, an agreement with [the senior] military council member was necessary. All directive documents issued by the front command were signed by the commander and [the senior] military council member with their names on the same line, while the chief of staff put his signature below, on the next line. This was done to emphasize the equal responsibility of the commander and the military council member for the realization of the decision.28
The senior of the two military council members was a high-ranking Party functionary like Nikolai Bulganin or even Politburo member Nikita Khrushchev. The senior member usually had no military training or experience; his role was essentially to be the Politburo’s eyes and ears in the field and directly control the activity of high commanders. Stalin frequently changed commanders at the fronts on the basis of reports from these members. The other member was usually a military supply commander. Besides their main duties, military councils were involved in the punishment of servicemen.
The total number of servicemen investigated and sentenced under Article 193 during the war was higher than the number investigated by OO/SMERSH under Article 58. On the whole, all military tribunals, including those in the Navy and NKVD, convicted 2,530,683 servicemen and of them, 471,988 were sentenced for ‘counter revolutionary crimes’ and 792,192 were convicted of military crimes. About 8 and a half percent, or 217,080, were sentenced to death and executed.29
Another count of persons convicted by the Red Army military tribunals only gives a more detailed picture. Of the total number of 994,300 servicemen convicted 422,700, or 42 per cent, served their sentences in their units (usually officers were demoted to privates) or, after July 1942, in special punishment troops called shtrafbaty and shtrafnye roty. However, this option was generally only available to those who committed military and real (bandits, rapists, embezzlers, etc.), not political, crimes. Most of the 436,600 convicts who ended up in labor camps (45 per cent of the total), were convicted of counter revolutionary crimes. The rest, 135,000, were sentenced to death and executed. One third, 376,300, were convicted of desertion.30 An NKVD report dated January 1, 1945, which gives a detailed breakdown of the sentences of all the prisoners in NKVD labor camps at that time, indicates that 28.3 per cent were incarcerated for counter revolutionary crimes and only 6.5 per cent were convicted of military crimes (Table 3-1).31
Overseeing political cases opened by the OO/SMERSH investigators was the second main duty of military prosecutors.32 For instance, before the war, in order to arrest a serviceman on counter revolutionary charges, both the OO head and a military prosecutor of the local district were required to sign an arrest warrant, which had to be authorized by a military commander. Additionally, the NKO Commissar had to approve arrests of all officers from platoon commander up, but usually no objections were raised.33 NKVD requests for Kliment Voroshilov’s (NKO Commissar from 1926 to 1940) approval of persecutions comprise 60 thick archival volumes. Semyon Timoshenko, who replaced Voroshilov, approved the arrests of generals just before the German attack on the Soviet Union in June 1941.
| Type of Crime | Article/Paragraph of the Criminal Code² | No. of Prisoners | % of Total |
|---|---|---|---|
| Counterrevolutionary Crimes (investigated by the OOs and other NKVD branches and after April 1943, by SMERSH and NKGB) | |||
| Treason against the Motherland | 58-1a, 1b | 77,067 | 19.6 |
| Espionage | 58-1a, 1b; 58-6; 193-24 | 16,014 | 4.1 |
| Terror acts and terrorist intentions | 58-8 | 10,245 | 2.6 |
| Diversions | 58-9 | 3,206 | 0.8 |
| Wreckers | 58-7 | 8,175 | 2.1 |
| Counterrevolutionary sabotage | 58-14 | 24,567 | 6.3 |
| Anti-Soviet plots and organizations | 58-2; 58-3; 58-4; 58-11 | 31,298 | 8.0 |
| Anti-Soviet propaganda | 58-10; 59-7 | 130,969 | 33.4 |
| Political bandits and participants in riots | 58-2; 59-2; 59-3 | 7,563 | 1.9 |
| Illegal crossing the border | 59-10 | 5,585 | 1.4 |
| Smuggling | 59-9 | 1,266 | 0.3 |
| Family members of traitors (chsiry) | 58-1c; 58-12 | 6,449 | 1.7 |
| Socially dangerous elements (SOE) | 7-35 | 13,112 | 3.3 |
| Others | No data | 57,093 | 14.5 |
| Total | 392,609 | 100.0 | |
| Military Crimes (investigated by military prosecutors) | |||
| Deserters | 193-7, 9, 10 | 49,771 | 55.4 |
| Self-inflictors | 193-12 | 5,010 | 5.6 |
| Marauders | 193-27 | 1,743 | 1.9 |
| Others | 193 | 33,330 | 37.1 |
| Total | 89,854 | 100.0 | |
| Real Crimes (investigated by militsiya [Soviet police] and civilian prosecutors) | |||
| Real crimes (bandits, thieves, etc.) | Various Articles | 636,736 | 70.6 |
| Special Laws and Decrees | Not in the Code | 254,107 | 28.1 |
| Violation of the Passport Law | 192a | 11,945 | 1.3 |
| Total | 902,788 | 100.0 | |
| Grand Total for All Crimes | 1,385,271 | 100.0 | |