Glossary

The title ‘Hero of the Soviet Union’ was the USSR’s highest award for heroism. It was instituted in 1934, and from 1939 the recipient was also awarded a Gold Star medal. Nearly 13,000 ‘Hero of the Soviet Union’ awards were made before collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, of which 90% were for heroism during the ‘Great Patriotic War’ (Second World War). The award was frequently issued posthumously, and could be received more than once. It was awarded both for battlefield heroism and military leadership.

The title Hero of the Soviet Union brought enormous social prestige. For ordinary Soviet citizens, it also came with significant tangible benefits, including lower tax rates, priority access to housing, a pension and cheap travel. Anyone who received the award twice had a statue of them erected in their town of birth.

Joseph Stalin, Marshal Konev, Marshal Vasilevsky and 98 other received the award twice. The only people to receive three Hero of the Soviet Union Gold Stars were Marshal Semyon Budyonny and the fighter pilots Ivan Kozhedub (Allied ‘ace of aces’) and Aleksandr Pokryshkin. Two men received the award four times – Marshal Georgi Zhukov, and in the 1960s, General Secretary Leonid Brezhnev (although Brezhnev received one as a 60th birthday present, which made him the butt of many snide jokes).

NKVD is a Russian acronym for People’s Commissariat of Internal Affairs, which was in charge of policing across the Soviet Union between 1934 and 1954. Although the NKVD oversaw many mundane policing activities, it became infamous during the 1930s and 40s for its role in political repression, espionage, and the running of the Gulag labour camps. A late-night visit from the NKVD was dreaded by ordinary Soviet citizens, as it often meant swift deportation, imprisonment or worse. The NKVD were an elite within Soviet society, and they received special privileges including better housing. They were easily recognisable in their bright blue or green caps, which helped other citizens to give them a wide berth if at all possible.

The NKVD’s subunit the GUGB (forerunner of the KGB) was the sword with which Stalin slew perceived ‘enemies of the state’. During the Great Purge of 1936/7 (under NKVD chief Nikolai Yezhov), to satisfy Stalin’s often paranoid delusions about threats to his regime, arbitrary quotas were drawn up specifying the number of ‘saboteurs’ or ‘enemies of the Revolution’ to be ‘liquidated’ in each region. The victims were wide-ranging. Little evidence was required to establish guilt. A careless remark reported by an anonymous informer was often sufficient. Historians estimate that during this period the NKVD executed 600,000 people, at the rate of 1,000 per day. Hundreds of thousands more were sent to the Gulag – labour camps scattered across the Soviet Union, were the work regime was sometimes little better than a death sentence.

In 1938 NKVD chief Yeshov himself was ‘purged’ and succeeded by Lavrenti Beria. Beria, who was devoid of any degree of human sympathy or compassion, became one of the most feared and reviled figures in history. In 1940, at Beria’s suggestion, Stalin ordered the GUGB to murder 22,000 Polish prisoners taken during the 1939 Soviet occupation of Poland. This was exposed by the Germans in 1943 and became known as the Katyn Forest Massacre. The NKVD was responsible for further massacres in 1941 as the German army advanced across the western Soviet Union. Beria gave orders that all prisoners who couldn’t be evacuated in time were to be executed. Instead of fighting the Germans, therefore, many NKVD units spent the critical weeks of June and July 1941 slaughtering the prison population.

The NKVD was also responsible for espionage and counter-espionage. It had agents across the world, responsible for pursuing and punishing Stalin’s enemies, and in 1940 one of its agents was responsible for the assassination of Leon Trotsky in Mexico.

During the war, the NKVD’s Special Tasks Department under Pavel Sudoplatov was responsible for co-ordinating the partisan war behind enemy lines. NKVD officers led several of the most effective partisan detachments. The NKVD also formed several rifle divisions and independent brigades which served in the field. They were responsible for hunting Red Army deserters, rear area security and fighting anti-Soviet partisans, although some served on the frontline, including at the Battles of Moscow and Stalingrad.

The Stavka was the Soviet armed forces high command, set up by the day after Hitler’s invasion by People’s Commissar of Defence Marshal Timoshenko. It met regularly at the Kremlin in Moscow, and its role was to formulate wartime military strategy. Its membership included senior government and military figures, and although generals such as Timoshenko and Voroshilov acted as the Stavka’s chairman and president, the most important voice in the room was always Stalin’s. The Stavka included (although membership changed several times during the war):

• Josef Stalin as General Secretary and later People’s Commissar of Defence
• General Georgi Zhukov, initially as Chief of the General Staff then as Stalin’s deputy commander
• General Aleksandr Vasilevsky as Chief of the General Staff
• The head of the navy, Admiral Nikolai Kuznetsov
• The head of the air force, General Aleksandr Novikov
• Vyacheslav Molotov (foreign minister)
• Lavrenti Beria (head of the NKVD secret police)
• Georgi Malenkov (senior Party figure and head of aircraft production)
• Marshal Semyon Timoshenko (People’s Commissar of Defence at the start of the war)
• Marshal Kliment Voroshilov (Deputy People’s Commissar of Defence)
• Marshal Semyon Budyonny, a close ally of Josef Stalin and senior military figure
• Marshal Boris Shaposhnikov, a long-serving member of the Soviet general staff and close ally of Josef Stalin

Several members of the Stavka were absent for long periods holding field commands, for example Marshal Budyonny spent most of 1942 in the Caucasus directing operations of the North Caucasus Front. The Stavka retained direct command over certain strategic reserves, including parts of the air force and the artillery, which they would use to fulfil special assignments. The Stavka also appointed its own representatives, who travelled into the field bearing the full authority of the Stavka. These representatives were frequently sent to resolve a specific crisis, such as Army Commissar Lev Mekhlis in the Kerch Peninsula in 1942 (which only served to make things worse) or General Ivan Kamera, an artillery specialist sent to assist the Kalinin Front in 1943.

Political officers, known in Russian as politruks, were assigned to every Red Army headquarters, from a Front (consisting of several armies) right down to the infantry company. Political Commissars worked at the regimental and divisional level, while more junior political officers were assigned to smaller units. They acted as the commanding officer’s deputy, and until October 1942 retained the right to veto his decisions if the politruk found them ‘politically unsound’.

All politruks were picked for their loyalty to the Communist Party, and had special responsibility for the motivation of the men, the maintenance of discipline and the soldiers’ welfare. Most importantly, they were responsible for the soldiers’ political education. All soldiers were expected to attend lectures on Communist theory and practice. Some politruks even organised lending libraries or held discussion groups.

At the start of the war, politruks were central to the organisation and training of the Red Army. Political indoctrination was considered just as important as teaching the men to shoot or dig a trench. Communist zeal, it was thought, would bind the men and spur them on to heroic deeds.

In October 1942 Stalin stripped Commissars of their military authority on the advice of his generals. Henceforth they were restricted to their role of political indoctrination.

The quality of political officers varied wildly. Some were enthusiastic, idealistic young officers who hoped to care for and inspire their men. Others (though there were less of these as the war went on) were cowardly despots who abused their authority, and ran the severe risk of being shot by their own men as soon as the fighting began.

Hitler’s ‘Commissar Order’ of June 1941 specified that any politruk that fell into German hands was to be executed immediately. This was part of Hitler’s attempt to eradicate the influence of ‘Jewish-Bolshevism’, that was such a driving factor in his decision to attack the USSR.

In most regards the Red Army was organised on the same lines as other European armies. Its regiments and brigades were formed into divisions. On paper a division had a strength of 14,000 men, though in practice they usually had somewhere between 5,000 and 8,000 men.

Several divisions formed a corps, and several corps formed an army, e.g. 6th Guards Tank Army. Red Army formations tended to be much weaker than their German equivalents - a Soviet tank corps was often only as strong as a German panzer division, each with about 200 tanks, though this total could vary dramatically. A Soviet Tank Army typically had about 600 tanks.

What other countries called an ‘army group’ (consisting of several armies) the Soviets called a ‘Front’, e.g. 1st Ukrainian Front. Fronts were normally named after their area of operations, e.g. North Caucasus Front, or sometimes their role, e.g. during the Battle of Kursk, the Reserve Front.

From September 1941, some Red Army units were awarded the honorific title ‘Guards’ in recognition of a particular feat of arms. There were Guards regiments and divisions, and by the end of the war even whole Guards armies. The Red Army also deployed five ‘Shock’ armies. Theoretically, these armies had additional artillery, engineers and heavy armour to smash through enemy defensive lines. In reality the title ‘Shock Army’ carried little distinction.

At the beginning of the war the Soviets employed an even higher level of command, known as a ‘Direction’, for example ‘Southwestern Direction’ in Ukraine in 1941. A Direction co-ordinated the operation of several Fronts, but this layer of organisation was gradually phased out.

Each of the armed forces was commanded by a People’s Commissar (equivalent to government minister). These were answerable to the People’s Commissar for Defence – initially Marshal Timoshenko, but replaced in 1941 by Josef Stalin himself. Stalin was also the Red Army’s Commander-in–Chief, and the senior figure on the Stavka (the armed forces supreme command).

In total, nearly 30 million men and women served in the Red Army during the Second World War. Nearly 9 million of them were killed.

Lend Lease was originally devised by US President Franklin D Roosevelt as a way of giving material aid to Great Britain without breaking America’s own laws of neutrality. From March 1941, it allowed Britain to use credit to place huge orders for arms and ammunition, vehicles, aircraft and supplies with which to fight Nazi Germany. Roosevelt explained it to the American people in terms of a man lending his neighbour a hose when his roof was on fire – it was unreasonable, he argued, not to give the man the hose until he’d handed over the $15 it cost him. Roosevelt’s isolationist opponents, who rightly feared Lend Lease would bring America closer to war with Germany, pointed out that America was unlikely to get this particular ‘hose’ back in good condition.

After Germany attacked the USSR in June 1941, American aid was soon extended to the Soviet Union. It arrived via several routes, most famously the Arctic Convoys, sailing from Iceland or Scotland through freezing and stormy seas to the northern Russian ports of Murmansk and Archangelsk. Another Lend Lease route came up through Persia to the Caucasus.

Probably the most important Lend Lease equipment to reach the Soviet Union was many thousands of American trucks and jeeps. This allowed the Red Army, which relied heavily on horse-transport in 1941, to motorise its infantry and tank brigades and keep the frontline supplied. The Soviets also received thousands of tons of signalling equipment. This was an area in which the Red Army was seriously deficient - in 1941 most Soviet tanks and aircraft did not have their own radios.

The Red Army also received many types of Allied tank and aircraft. Some of these were more popular with Soviet crews than others. American A-10 Boston bombers were widely used and well-liked by Soviet air force crews in the Caucasus and Black Sea. The Bell P-39 Airacobra was another favourite of Soviet pilots, and flown by many of the top aces. Britain also sent Hawker Hurricane fighters, although these were regarded as inferior to most Soviet designs. According to some estimates, almost one third of Soviet air strength was supplied by the Western Allies under Lend Lease.

Few of the Allied tanks to arrive in the Soviet Union impressed Russian tank crews – the American M3 Stuart and the British Valentine light tanks were much inferior to the T-34. They did find some redeeming features in the American M4 Sherman – the mainstay of the Western Allies’ tank divisions. Despite this disdain, Red Army soldiers must have been thankful when Lend Lease made the difference between Western tanks and no tanks, particularly in remote areas like the Caucasus where they had virtually no tanks of their own.

It is only since 1991 and the opening of Soviet archives that the scale and role of Lend Lease in the Red Army’s victory has been understood. It is now widely recognised as playing a valuable role, particularly in the Soviet ability to launch fast-moving (motorised) offensives from 1943.