2. To dismiss the commander of the PVO Main Directorate, Major General of Artillery [Aleksei] Osipov, for drinking, and to demote him from his position…
[…]
10. To inform all commanding and political officers of the PVO detachments about this order.
Of the mentioned officers, the fate of General Osipov is known. He was appointed commander of the Gorky Regional PVO Division, while the entire PVO Main Directorate was disbanded and its directorates and departments were placed under the military council of the Air Defense Troops.
Pyotr Todorovsky, a 19-year-old infantry platoon commander in 1944 who became a famous movie director after the war, recalled that drinking caused enormous losses among young soldiers:
Before the attack a sergeant used to bring us half of a bucket of [pure] alcohol and give each of us a cup of it… Usually a newly drafted soldier (we called them ‘pervachok’ [first-time participant]) drank a lot—for instance, half of the cup—because of fear. …After drinking too much the newly drafted soldiers were almost always killed in the first attack. And the starichki [old men] didn’t drink at all, or only pretended that they were drinking: they touched the alcohol with their lips, but didn’t swallow. Drinking a little bit helped a soldier during an attack, but drinking too much [often] resulted in his death.37
There were also accidents caused when servicemen stumbled upon a cache of methyl alcohol. An infantryman recalled: ‘During the battle for the city of Brest a tank car full of methyl alcohol was discovered at the railroad station… A lot of soldiers… filled their flasks with that alcohol, others drank while repeating: “We’ll perish anyway, while fighting.” …In the battalion, I think, at least fifty passed away.’38
The situation described in the Timoshenko–Khrushchev order was quite typical. The military tribunals of the Don Front reported to Moscow that during the first quarter of 1942 ‘unauthorized executions of subordinates and crimes due to drunkenness were common among commanders’.39 When Georgii Malenkov, a GKO member, came to inspect the Volkhov Front, the OO head reported that in March 1942 almost all of the commanding officers of the 59th Army got drunk frequently and had disreputable sexual relationships with servicewomen or so-called ‘PPZhs’ (an acronym of pokhodno-polevaya zhena, or ‘campaign wife’).40
Although the OO and political officers considered PPZhs a problem in terms of morale, marshals like Konstantin Rokossovsky and Georgii Zhukov each lived openly during the war with a PPZh, and it was a common practice for high-and mid-level commanders.41 A lieutenant-veteran recalled: ‘Many servicewomen were officers’ PPZhs, but platoon commanders didn’t have PPZhs. We slept in the same dugout where our soldiers slept, while a company commander had his individual dugout. So, the company commander and officers of higher posts had more favorable conditions to have a PPZh… Usually a PPZh was decorated with the “For Combat Merits” medal.’42 High commanders were even more generous. For instance, Lidia Zakharova, Marshal Zhukov’s PPZh, received the Red Banner Order, the Red Star Order, five medals, and three foreign military awards. After the Red Army crossed the border with Germany, some officers even picked up girls of 16 or 17 and kept them for a while.43
While there is no known record of what happened to the drunken OO men of the 1st Tank Brigade, the episode was not unusual. In 1946 Ivan Serov wrote to Stalin about the behavior of Pavel Zelenin, one of Abakumov’s men and later a high-level functionary in SMERSH:
At the beginning of 1942, we [NKVD headquarters] received information that many groups among our soldiers at the Southern Front crossed the lines and went over to the enemy. At the same time, Security Major Zelenin, head of the Special Department of this front, did not prevent these treacherous actions during this difficult time, but became demoralized, lived with female typists, and gave them medals. He also enticed the wife of the head of the Army Political Department to his apartment, where he got her drunk and raped her…
C.[omrade] Abakumov called for Zelenin, but I do not know his decision.44
Abakumov constantly received reports from various fronts about the unprofessional behavior, misconduct and illegal actions of OO officers.45 During 1942, he issued several orders demanding that the OOs improve the quality of their investigative work.46
Notes
1. OO Directive No. 003260, Southern Front, dated November 18, 1941, in Organy gosudarstvennoi bezopasnosti, 3 (2), 316–8.
2. NKVD Order No. 00852, dated April 28, 1942; partly quoted in Sergei Kononov, SMERSH. Momenty istiny (Moscow: Yauza-Eksmo, 2009), 220–2 (in Russian). Also, NKVD instruction, dated April 30, 1942. Document Nos. 1 and 2 in Apparat NKVD-NKGB v Germanii, 1945–1953, edited by N. Petrov and Ya. Foitsik, 54–59 (Moscow: Demokratiya, 2009) (in Russian).
3. Stakhanov’s report, dated January 17, 1945, with Beria’s cover letter, dated January 19, 1945. GARF, Fond R-9401, Opis’ 2 (Stalin’s NKVD/MVD Special Folder), Delo 92, Ll. 86–89.
4. Na prieme u Stalina. Tetradi (zhurnaly) zapisei lits, pronyatykh I. V. Stalinym (1924–1953 gg.), edited by A. V. Korotkov, A. D. Chernev, and A. A. Chernobaev, 447 (Moscow: Novyi khronograf, 2008) (in Russian).
5. Bradley F. Smith, Sharing Secrets with Stalin: How the Allies Traded Intelligence, 1941–1945 (Lawrence, KS: University Press of Kansas, 1996), 234–5.
6. Report No. 70991-sch by Belyanov, OO head of the Western Front, to Georgii Zhukov, commander of the same front, dated December 30, 1941, in Organy gosudarstvennoi bezopasnosti, 3 (2), 480–85.
7. Report by V. M. Kazakevich, deputy OO head of the Stalingrad Front, to the UOO, dated September 10, 1942, in ibid., 3 (2), 227–28.
8. N. V. Grekov, ‘Deiatel’nost’ kontrrazvedki “SMERSH” po presecheniyu izmeny i dezertirstva v voiskakh vo vremya Velikoi Otechestvennoi voiny 1941–1945 gg.,’ VIZh, no. 2 (1996), 42–48 (in Russian).
9. Joint Directive No. 00146/004137 by Zeidin, head of the Main Directorate of Military Tribunals, and Nosov, Chief Military Prosecutor, dated November 30, 1942. Cited in Zvyagintsev, Voina na vesakh Femidy, 302.
10. Ye. M. Meletinsky, Izbrannye stat’i. Vospaminaniya (Moscow: Rossiiskii gosudarstvennyi gumanitarnyi unyiversitet, 1998), 487–8 (in Russian).
11. The above-cited report by Kazakevich, dated September 10, 1942.
12. V. P. Artemiev et al., Political Controls in the Soviet Army: A Study Based on Reports by Former Soviet Officers (New York: Research Program on the USSR, 1954), 60–61, 74–75.
13. Reports of political officers cited in Senyavskaya, 1941–1945, 132–33.
14. Bykov,’ Za Rodinu! Za Stalina!’
15. Decree of the Presidium of the USSR Supreme Council, dated July 16, 1941(draft edited by Stalin). Document No. 11 in ‘Voina. 1941–1945,’ Vestnik Arkhiva Presidenta Rossiiskoi Federatsii (Moscow, 2010), 37–40 (in Russian).
16. Decree of the Presidium of the USSR Supreme Council, dated October 9, 1942.