Most commanders hated the zampolity. Georgii Arbatov, later head of Moscow’s Institute of USA and Canadian Studies, recalled:
We, fighting commanders… secretly despised [zampolity] and laughed at them… In trying to justify their privileged position and participation in command decisions without professional knowledge… they made our difficult life at the front line even harder. And they ruined the lives of many good and courageous people, accusing them of “defeatist thoughts” or “enemy propaganda”… or making scapegoats of them for military failures.18
However, looking back at the war years, some former privates consider ‘political workers’ to have been necessary in the army because they were the only source of news. They also regulated the high tension among soldiers of different ethnic origins (according to many memoirs, the level of hidden anti-Semitism was very high among Russian privates).19 Of course, through political commissars, soldiers ‘received just a restricted portion of the actual information. Usually it was vague, as well’.20
Even now, however, other veterans still deeply despise the ‘political workers’ and call them names like ‘rear rats and parasites’.21 The writer Viktor Astafiev, a veteran, wrote: ‘I consciously did not join the Party at the front, although in 1944 the political departments… forced almost everyone to join it… But we did not care about Stalin and about screaming “hurrah”; our dream was to drop down and have a little bit of sleep.’22
Although the OO head did not interfere in the day-to-day affairs of the unit commander the way a zampolit did, the military commander had to submit copies of all his orders to the OO officer. The OO officer could submit written questions that the commander was obligated to answer in writing. OO heads also had a say in the promotion of unit officers.23
Censorship was another example of joint activity of the OO and zampolity.24 Servicemen were categorically prohibited from writing diaries or other personal notes, and very few of them dared to violate this prohibition.25 All letters were severely censored. Using data culled from servicemen’s letters, the OO heads reported on troop morale to Abakumov’s deputy, Solomon Milshtein.26 Each report included politically correct and incorrect excerpts from these letters. The politically incorrect letters were confiscated and destroyed, their authors were punished, and the zampolity of the offending writers’ units were informed. OO officers were urged to remain vigilant: ‘All OO heads are instructed to send agents [secret informers] to identify individuals who have voiced anti-Soviet statements and to prevent them from engaging in any anti-Soviet activity.’27
The OOs also reported on the work of political officers. The 7th departments of the front political directorates (and the 7th sections within the political departments of the armies) attracted the special attention of the osobisty. These political departments and sections were in charge of political propaganda among the enemy troops. Officers of these units interrogated German POWs, used them for writing propaganda leaflets and for radio transmissions to the German troops, and so on. This close relationship with enemy POWs was constantly monitored by the osobisty.28
In 1941, the OO and political officers were better armed than the infantry. On October 21, 1941 the commander of the armored troops, Colonel General (later Marshal) Yakov Fedorenko, reported to Stalin: “Automatic arms [machine guns]…, designed for the infantry, in fact are given to the rear units of the divisions, armies, and fronts, especially to such institutions as tribunals, prosecutor’s offices, and special and political departments, and not to the fighting troops. Most commanders also have these arms… It is necessary to ban having these automatic arms in the rear units.”29 Stalin never issued any such order.
Officers Out of Control
In spite of dual control of the troops through military counterintelligence and political officers, discipline was not ideal and sometimes, even OO officers committed outright murder. On December 12, 1941, Marshal Timoshenko, commander of the Southwestern Front, and Nikita Khrushchev, of the front’s Military Council, signed an order stating: ‘The Head of the Special Department of the First Tank Brigade, and Assistant to the Technical Department of the Tank Regiment, ordered, without any reason, that the Lieutenant of the 1st Tank Brigade be shot to death.’30 The order said the officers were to be tried by a military tribunal ‘for overreaching their authority, unauthorized shootings, and beatings [of subordinates]’.
There is an additional note in the order: ‘All members of this group were drunk.’ The problem of drunken officers was serious. In August 1941, Stalin signed a GKO decision: ‘Beginning September 1, 1941, every soldier and commander at the front line is to be provided with 100 grams of 40-proof vodka every day.’31 From June 1942 on, only the front-line troops involved in offensive actions received 100 grams of vodka, while the rest received 50 grams.32
Most of the Great Patriotic War veterans always recalled their every-day ‘100 grams’ with warm feeling. However, the distribution of vodka was not well managed: ‘Vodka is still given to HQ members, commanders, and units with no right to receive it. Some unit commanders and commanding members of HQs use their positions to get vodka from storage in violation of orders and rules. Military councils of the fronts poorly control the distribution of vodka. The inventory of vodka in the units is not carried out satisfactorily.’33 Tank crews even invented a method to conceal vodka they had obtained illegally. They dismantled several shells, threw the gunpowder away and replaced it with vodka, then attached projectiles back and made special marks on the shells.34 Only the crew members could distinguish the usual kind of shells from those filled with vodka. An American POW liberated by Soviet troops from a German concentration camp reported to the American military officials in April 1945: ‘Most of the Russian front-line troops, including officers, are intoxicated at all times.’35
Drinking was a serious problem even during the Battle of Moscow. On April 5, 1942, Stalin signed an angry order regarding the air defense (PVO) corps of Moscow:
Discipline in the Moscow Regional PVO Corps is very poor. Drinking parties, especially among the commanding officers, are common. Poor discipline and excessive drinking are not being properly dealt with. The number of discipline violations incurred by Red Army privates, officer cadets, and low-and high-level commanders of the PVO detachments is growing.
This situation must not be tolerated any more.
I order:
1. To arrest and try by military tribunaclass="underline"
a) The commissar of the Main PVO Directorate, Brigade Commissar Kurganov, for chronic drinking;
b) The commissar of the 745th Anti-Aircraft Artillery Regiment, Corps Commissar Zakharov, for drinking and for not reporting [to his post] during an enemy-air-raid alert;
c) Politruk [political officer] of the 3rd Company of the 175th Artillery Regiment, Andreev, and the air force mechanic of the same company, Military Technician of the 2nd Rank Kukin, for a drinking party, riot, and random gunfire that resulted in the fatal shooting of Lieutenant Kazanovsky, the head of the signal company.