The party built an empire of its own within the army’s ranks to work upon men’s minds. Its interests were represented by an organization called PURKKA, the Political Administration of the Red Army. Among the most powerful operators at the top of this unmilitary structure was Lev Mekhlis, a sinister figure more identified with covert arrests than soldiering. His influence on the Red Army would be a baleful one, and his removal, after 1942, signalled a turning point in the culture of the General Staff. But in 1939, the army still laboured with the burden of political interference. As far as the men were concerned, this aspect of their lives was ruled by political commissars, who operated at regimental and battalion level, and political officers – the Soviet term is politruk – who worked within the companies and lower units. A second tier included young communists, komsomols, whose agents among the men were known as komsorgs.
An individual politruk was likely to combine the functions of a propagandist with those of an army chaplain, military psychiatrist, school prefect and spy. ‘The politruk,’ the army’s orders state, ‘is the central figure for all educational work among soldiers.’45 The range of topics that they taught was wide indeed. Politruks were present at classes in target shooting, drill practice and rifle disassembly. They were the individuals who typed up individual scores, noting how many men were ‘excellent’ in any field and inventing excuses for the many who were not. They wrote monthly reports on their units’ discipline, on morale and on ‘extraordinary events’, including desertion, drunkenness, insubordination and absence without leave. They were also the men behind the party’s festivals, including the anniversary of the October Revolution (which, since the calendar itself had been reformed, now fell on 7 November each year), Red Army Day (23 February), and the workers’ carnival on 1 May. Enlisted men looked forward to these holidays. The lecture that they had to sit through from the politruk was just a prelude, after all, to a bit of free time and some serious drinking.
A politruk who really thumped the propaganda drum was bound to meet resistance. It is impressive that some – earnest, ambitious or just plain devout – tried everything to mould their men according to the rules. They kept up a barrage of discussions, meetings and poster campaigns. They read aloud to the troops in their spare time, usually from newspapers like the army’s own Red Star. Some managed small libraries, and almost all ran propaganda huts where posters were designed and banners hung. Political officers in all units taught basic literacy, too, as well as investigating complaints and answering the men’s questions about daily life. It was never easy work. Like every other type of officer, the politruks battled with shortages. ‘We do not have a single volume of the works of Lenin,’ one man informed his commissar in 1939. Worse, units that were bound for Finland discovered that they had no portraits of the leader, Stalin. ‘Send urgently,’ a telegram commands.46 Although they seem absurd in retrospect, some of these politruks, and their younger comrades, the komsorgs, believed in their mission and made real sacrifices in its name. Maybe some of the soldiers appreciated it in 1939; they would do, some of them, in the confusion of the Second World War. But more looked at the politruks’ clean boots, smooth hands, and unused cartridge belts and sensed hypocrisy.
The politruks were hated, too, because they had an overall responsibility for discipline. Denunciations often originated with them, and it was usually their reports that brought the military police, the Special Section, into a mess room or barracks. This function was in direct conflict with another of the politruks’ roles, which was to foster an atmosphere of mutual trust. ‘Revolutionary discipline is the discipline of the people, bound solidly with a revolutionary conscience…,’ their regulations said. ‘It is based not on class subordination but on a conscious understanding of… the goals and purpose of the Workers’ and Peasants’ Red Army.’47 Some people may have found that shared values like this built networks of political comradeship, but the culture of double standards, of secret denunciations and hypocritical demands was hardly conducive to the kind of group spirit that an army requires. Soldiers and officers who needed to rely on comrades absolutely in the event of an attack – whose lives depended on sentries, on gunners, and above all, on their mates – soon found that fluency in Marxism– Leninism was no guarantee of steadfastness under fire. For the next three years, however, the politruks talked on. Communists were reliable, the argument went. Shared ideology ought to be quite enough to reassure a man that the soldier beside him would cover his flank when the shooting started. Known enemies would be removed. The party would take care of everything.
Even in peacetime the system floated on a morass of false piety. The politruks – like party members everywhere – included plenty of poor role models, including little empire-builders who controlled the vodka and the girls. ‘Junior politruk Semenov must be turned over to a military tribunal,’ ran a telegram of 1940. ‘He is morally corrupt… He continues to drink, bringing the name of an officer into disrepute.’ He had been discovered that week with a prostitute, helpless, in the bottom of a rubbish bin.48 But more evaded censure than were ever caught. It fell to the men to express their views. ‘If I end up in combat,’ an infantryman told his communist neighbour, ‘I’ll stick my revolver in your throat first.’ ‘The first person I’ll shoot will be politruk Zaitsev,’ threatened another conscript as he packed for Finland. Two young deserters whose unit was also bound for the north were locked up when they were returned to base. ‘As soon as we get to the front,’ one of them said, ‘I’ll kill the deputy politruk.’49 It may have been to spite the party that soldiers daubed swastikas over their barracks walls. The fact that many politruks, as men whose education tended to be better than the average, were Jews was probably a factor, too. Reports from early 1939 noted the ‘anti-Semitic remarks and pro-Hitler leaflets’ that some politruks had found among the men.50
Tensions and resentments of this kind were a large part of the reason for the Red Army’s unpreparedness for war, but the nature of the soldiers’ combat training also had a part to play. With ideology so prominent in the men’s timetable each day, extra hours had to be found to accommodate conventional forms of training. In 1939, the ‘study day’ was ten hours long; from March 1940, following the Finnish disaster, it was increased to twelve. ‘I don’t have time to prepare for all this studying,’ a recruit muttered. ‘I don’t even have time to wash.’51 In fact, the only skills that most recruits had time to learn were very basic ones. The men were taught to march, to lie down or jump up on a command, and most exhaustingly, to dig. They learned to get up and to dress in minutes, winding the long cat’s cradle of their footcloths as they chewed on their first hand-rolled cigarette. The drill might appear pointless, but at least it was the first step to real soldiering, to reflex-like obedience and greater physical strength. If there had been the time – to say nothing of the clarity of command – to build on it, things might have worked out better for the men. But political meddling constantly undermined their confidence, and lack of time restricted the skills that they were able to learn.