Tension also existed due to the special privileges enjoyed by commanding officers. Unlike privates, commanders received an additional food ration called doppayok, which included a can of meat, a piece of butter, a package of sugar, and good quality tobacco or even cigarettes.24 Privates respected only those officers who shared their additional rations with them. An additional privilege was introduced in April 1942, when commanders from the company level up, as well as their deputies, were ordered to have ordinartsy (orderlies or batmen)—privates who were their personal servants.25 As a result, a disrespected or cruel officer was always at risk because he could be easily shot by his own men in combat, when the killer could not be identified, or else left wounded and unattended on a battlefield.26 Apparently, the cases Beria singled out were unusual because the perpetrators subsequently deserted to the enemy.
In answer to Beria’s suggestions, on June 24, 1942 Stalin signed an extremely strong GKO Decision on the persecution of family members of all traitors, military and civilian, who had been sentenced to death under Article 58-1a (even in absentia) by tribunals or the OSO.27 The included crimes were: spying for Germany and its allies; changing sides; aiding the German occupiers; participation in the punitive organs or administration established by the Germans in the occupied territories; attempted or intended treason. Now the relatives of the condemned (chsiry) were automatically arrested and sent into exile for five years on the decision of the OSO. As for cases of killing commanders, Beria sent a new instruction to the OO heads at the fronts:
1. Each terrorist act against commanders and political officers in the Red Army and Military-Marine Fleet committed by a private or a low-level commander must be carefully investigated. Persons who commit a terrorist act must be shot to death in front of their units, like deserters and servicemen with self-inflicted injuries. The decision [to execute] must be authorized by the head of the OO. A special record on the execution of the guilty serviceman should be written.
2. The local NKVD office in the territory where the relatives of the executed person live must be informed via a ciphered telegram to take the appropriate legal measures against them.28
No information is available on how many servicemen were executed following this instruction, but these and similar instructions remained in effect after the UOO became SMERSH in 1943.
Notes
1. Zvyagintsev, Voina na vesakh Femidy, 558.
2. M. Delagrammatik, ‘Voennye tribunaly za rabotoi,’ Novyi mir, no. 6 (1997) (in Russian), http://magazines.russ.ru/novyi_mi/1997/6/delagr.html, retrtieved September 6, 2011.
3. NKVD report, dated January 1, 1945; quoted in Nikita Petrov, Istoriya imperii ‘GULAG.’ Glava 12 (in Russian), http://www.pseudology.org/GULAG/Glava12.htm, retrieved September 6, 2011.
4. Abakumov’s report to Stalin, dated December 21, 1945. Page 25 in L. Ye. Reshin and V. S. Stepanov, ‘Sud’by general’skie,’ VIZh, no. 11 (1992), 24–27 (in Russian).
5. Details of the case in Nikolai Smirnov, Vplot’ do vysshei mery (Moscow: Moskovskii rabochii, 1997), 73–84 (in Russian).
6. Lidiya Golovkova, Sukhanovskaya tyur’ma. Spetsob’ekt 110 (Moscow: Vozvrashchenie, 2009), 96–97 (in Russian).
7. Beria’s letter to Molotov, dated November 23, 1938. Document No. 66 in Istoriya stalinskogo GULAGa. Konets 1920-kh–pervaia polovina 1950-kh godov. Tom 2. Karatel’naia sistema: struktura i kadry, edited by N. V. Petrov, 151–2 (in Russian).
8. Evgenii Gnedin, Vykhod iz labirinta (Moscow: Memorial, 1994), 70–76 (in Russian).
9. Ibid., 70.
10. Alexander Dolgun with Patrick Watson, Alexander Dolgun’s Story: An American in the Gulag (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1975), 116.
11. Gnedin, Vykhod iz labirinta, 71.
12. Lidiya Golovkova, ‘Pytochnaya tyur’ma Stalina,’ Novaya Gazeta, no. 136, December 7, 2009 (in Russian), http://www.novayagazeta.ru/data/2009/136/23.html, retrieved September 6, 2011.
13. Gnedin, Vykhod iz labirinta, 76.
14. For the conditions and treatment of prisoners in this hospital, see NKVD Order No. 00913, dated July 31, 1945. Quoted in Petrov, ‘Istoriya imperii “GULAG.” Glava 12’.
15. Golovkova, Sukhanovskaya tyur’ma, 146–50.
16. Details in Smirnov, Vplot’ do vysshei mery, 119–26.
17. Timoshenko’s words quoted in V. V. Beshanov, God 1942—‘Uchebnyi’ (Minsk: Kharvest, 2003), 220 (in Russian).
18. Recollections of Anastas Mikoyan, in G. Kumanev, Govoryat stalinskie narkomy (Smolensk: Rusich, 2005), 66 (in Russian).
19. From a protocol (transcript) of Levchenko’s interrogation, quoted in V. A. Bobrenev and V. B. Ryazantsev, Palachi i zhertvy (Moscow: Voenizdat, 1993), 220 (in Russian).
20. Kuznetsov’s Directive No. 621/sh, in Zvyagintsev, Voina na vesakh Femidy, 257–8.
21. Beria’s report to Stalin No. 1066/B, dated June 18, 1942. Document No. 223, in Lubyanka. Stalin i NKVD–NKGB–GUKR ‘Smersh.’ 1939–mart 1946, edited by V. N. Khaustov, V. P. Naumov, and N. S. Plotnikova, 349–50 (Moscow: Materik, 2006) (in Russian).
22. Vasil’ Bykov, ‘Za Rodinu! Za Stalina!,’ Rodina, no. 5 (1995), 30–37 (in Russian).
23. Vasil’ Bykov, ‘Dolgaya doroga domoi,’ Druzhba narodov, no. 8 (2003) (in Russian), http://magazines.russ.ru/druzhba/2003/8/bykov.html, retrieved September 6, 2011.
24. Ye. S. Senyavskaya, 1941–1945: Frontovoe pokolenie. Istoriko-psikhologicheskoe issledovanie (Moscow: Institut Rossiiskoi Istorii RAN, 1995), 112 (in Russian).
25. Stavka’s Directive No. 004235, dated April 9, 1942.
26. David Samoilov, ‘Lyudi odnogo varianta. Iz voennykh zapisok,’ Avrora, no. 1–2 (1990), 66–67 (in Russian).
27. GKO Order No. 1926ss, dated June 24, 1942. Document No. 224, in Lubyanka. Stalin i NKVD, 350–51.
28. NKVD Instruction No. 1237, dated June 27, 1942. Document No. 994, in Organy gosudarstvennoi bezopasnosti, 3 (1), 577.
CHAPTER 12
Special Tasks of the OOs
In addition to finding traitors and spies among the troops, Abakumov’s men were charged with some general tasks such as clearing regions near front lines of the local civilian population, organizing barrage units behind the fighting Soviet troops—the role of osobisty and later SMERSH officers most hated by Russian veterans—and vetting former POWs.