Russian archive: Great Patriotic War. Orders of the People's Commissar of Defense of the USSR. June 22, 1941 - 1942

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1941- 1942

Abstract of the publisher: This collection includes orders of the People's Commissar of Defense of the USSR, issued from June 22, 1941, to December 31, 1942. The presented documents reflect the most significant aspects of the life and combat activities of the Red Army as a whole, as well as the types of the Armed Forces, military branches, and many links military infrastructure during the Great Patriotic War Most documents are published for the first time. The book is intended for specialist researchers in the history of the Great Patriotic War, employees of the military administration apparatus, commanders and staff officers of all levels, teachers, and students of military educational institutions, as well as for a wide range of readers interested in Russian military history. 

Foreword

The Institute of Military History of the Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation has developed a program for publishing documents on the history of the Great Patriotic War of 1941-1945.

An integral part of this program is the publication of orders issued in wartime by the People's Commissar of Defense of the USSR. Orders, in most cases, were signed by I. V. Stalin. On July 19, 1941, Stalin became People's Commissar of Defense, while remaining Chairman of the Council of People's Commissars, General Secretary of the Central Committee of the Party, and Chairman of the State Defense Committee. On August 8, 1941, Stalin assumed the post of Supreme Commander-in-Chief, concentrating in his hands all the power of the highest military person in the country. Consequently, the orders signed or sanctioned by him reflect the position of all the highest authorities and have the nature of documents of paramount military and political significance, and the comments, corrections, remarks in them in the margins and in the text, to a certain extent, reflect the creative process of making decisions and allow the people to follow the progress, the thoughts of those who assumed responsibility for their acceptance.

This volume includes documents signed from June 22, 1941, to December 31, 1942. It was a tragic year and a half of the war for the Fatherland. But it was precisely in those months that the greatest qualities of Russians were most fully manifested: love for the Motherland, solidarity, heroism, self-sacrifice. For the indicated year and a half, the People's Commissariat of Defense issued about 2,300 orders. Selected and included in this collection of 307 documents. Their content covers both the most general and typical particular problems of warfare.

The collection also includes twelve orders issued on behalf of the Headquarters of the Supreme Command (High Command). This is legitimate, because in 1941 - 1942 there was not yet a sufficiently clear delineation of issues on which orders were signed by one and the same person - Stalin. Thus, some of the orders signed by the People's Commissar of Defense contained the requirements of the Headquarters (Doc. No. 6, 59, 71, 94, 228), and vice versa, individual orders signed by the Headquarters were within the competence of the People's Commissar of Defense (Doc. No. 11, 103, 126, 215); there are orders signed by I. Stalin both as the Supreme Commander-in-Chief and as the People's Commissar of Defense (Doc. No. 47, 60, 103). It is no coincidence that the orders of the People's Commissar of Defense and the Headquarters were taken into account in one paperwork. Documents are placed in this collection in chronological order.

The content of the orders indicates that already in the first days and weeks of the war, many weaknesses in the organization and armament, in the combat use of formations and units of the Red Army, were exposed. Many orders begin with the words "As the first experience of the war showed ..." (Doc. No. 4, 6, 22, etc.). And this experience was in many ways "the son of difficult mistakes" made back in the pre-war years. They should have been corrected.

For example, the issues of structural reorganization of formations and units of many military branches turned out to be at the center of attention of the top military leadership. The orders on these issues (Doc. No. 6, 15, 40, 53, 54, 66, 93, etc.) clearly show a line to reduce the number of staff, the number of weapons and military equipment in formations and units, which was due to their understaffing before the start of the war, the huge losses of the Red Army in people and weapons, the impossibility of their quick replenishment, as well as the lack of experience and reliable means of communication among commanders for effective command and control of troops in battle.

But already since the spring of 1942, on the basis of the growing capabilities of industry in the production of weapons, in the construction of the Red Army, a tendency has been traced to mass the most important means of armed struggle. Reorganization of tank corps and armies was carried out (doc. No. 199), aviation (doc. No. 243), mechanized (doc. No. 278) corps, anti-aircraft, artillery (doc. No. 284), heavy guards mortar divisions (doc. No. 297) were formed) RVGK, airborne guards divisions (doc. No. 301).

At the same time, as can be seen from the documents, measures were taken to study, generalize and apply the experience of the war to improve the use of tank, mechanized, engineering troops, artillery, aviation, anti-aircraft weapons, radio communications in various types of combat (Doc. No. 4, 94, 103, 122, 279, etc.). In April 1942, an independent department for the use of war experience was created at the General Staff, which developed instructions, directives on these issues (doc. No. 175).

For rifle subunits, units and formations of the Red Army, Order No. 306 of October 8, 1942 (doc. No. 264) was of particular importance, which introduced profound changes in the tactics of their actions in offensive combat, consolidated innovative approaches to building a battle order. The main meaning of these changes was to significantly increase the fire and shock impact of rifle troops on the enemy in an offensive battle.

Equally important were the requirements of Order No. 0263 of April 9, 1942, on the training of combined arms commanders (doc. No. 165). It emphasized that the combined arms commander must be able to combine the actions of infantry, artillery, mortars, tanks, aviation, engineering equipment in combat, and for this he must have elementary knowledge of the capabilities and methods of using these types of troops. The order determined a complete system of measures for the training of commanders - masters in the organization of combined arms combat.

The documents included in the collection make it possible to similarly trace the content and direction of the administrative functions of the People's Commissariat of Defense on many issues and aspects of the life and combat activities of the armed forces, various parts of the defense infrastructure in the first period of the war. At the same time, priority attention was paid to the mobilization of draft contingents, the unconditional provision of new formations with personnel and personnel, the creation of a logistics support system for the army in the field and rear management, improvement of all types of communications, care for the families of military personnel, the wounded, awarding and encouraging those who distinguished themselves in battle, and many other things.

(Revisionist propaganda follows. S.M)*

The content of many orders on mobilization issues indirectly testifies to the large losses of the Red Army and the increased needs for human resources for new formations. Literally from everywhere, everyone who was fit for military service was sent to the front (Doc. No. 28, 55, 147, 162, 163, 281, etc.). Hundreds of thousands of women were mobilized to replace private and junior officers in the air defense, air force, signal troops, rear units, and institutions. They successfully coped with their official duties (Doc. No. 154, 162, 172, 173, 239, 281).

The participation in the struggle against the fascist aggressor of representatives of different nations and nationalities of the USSR is indicated by orders to publish front-line newspapers in several languages ​​(Doc. No. 189, 206, 250).

The attention of readers, researchers, of course, will be attracted by documents that reveal the socio-political meaning, methods and means of strengthening the system of power, order, and discipline in the rear and at the front, and ensuring the wartime regime.

It is known that war, as a special state of society, objectively requires strengthening the centralization of power, strengthening diligence, discipline, resolute suppression of crimes, and antisocial phenomena. The emergency situation of wartime gives rise to extraordinary means, forms, and methods of its control by the state authorities.

The decrees of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR adopted on these issues, the decisions, and orders of the State Defense Committee, as well as the verdicts of the Supreme Court of the USSR and the military tribunals of the fronts were declared the corresponding orders of the People's Commissar of Defense.
(Revisionist propaganda follows. S.M)

A special place among the published documents is occupied by Order No. 227 of July 28, 1942, on measures to strengthen military discipline and order in the Red Army and the prohibition of unauthorized withdrawal from combat positions (doc. No. 228). 

(Revisionist propaganda follows. S.M)

In general, the orders of the People's Commissar of Defense as a form of operational - and even political - control and influence on the psyche and consciousness of people played a positive role in mobilizing personnel to disrupt Hitler's plans of conquest in the first period of the Great Patriotic War. The content of the orders included in this collection reveals in its totality the contours of those fundamentally important achievements of the army and the people, which served as the initial basis for the subsequent victorious conduct of the war.

The most important of them are as follows.

(Revisionist propaganda follows. S.M)

Millions and millions of patriots went into mortal combat with the enemy. Soldiers and commanders in 1941-1942 defended Moscow, Leningrad, Transcaucasia, and the main street of Russia - the Volga. The Red Army, which at the beginning of the war lost up to 90 percent of its original composition, survived, was filled with fresh forces, and became stronger. Hitler's plan for a blitzkrieg against the USSR was thwarted. Other calculations of the German leadership were overturned. So, on July 3, 1941, the chief of staff of the German ground forces, Halder, wrote in his diary:

“When we force the Western Dvina and the Dnieper, it will be not so much about defeating the enemy’s armed forces, but about taking away the enemy’s industrial areas from the enemy and preventing him from creating new armed forces".

But this is precisely what the aggressor failed to achieve. It can be seen from the documents that in a year and a half the people have done a lot to increase the combat power of the Red Army. The enemy experienced the strength of its crushing blows in November 1942 in the Stalingrad region. From that moment on, the next contenders for the role of conquerors of Russia began to inevitably roll back, more and more approaching their complete catastrophe.

The documents presented in the book are published in the overwhelming majority according to original copies stored in the Russian State Military Archive; only three orders are published as certified copies. Most of the documents are placed completely. In cases of incomplete publication of appendices, instructions, manuals, their omitted parts are briefly commented on in footnotes.

Of the 307 orders included in the collection, 177 were marked "secret" and 50 were "top secret." The compilers considered it possible not to indicate the secrecy stamp of each document, since the order number testifies to it: starting with "0" - "secret", and with "00" - "top secret". Information about several orders and directives of NGOs is contained in the notes on the text and content of the documents.

The text retains all the stylistic features, abbreviated names and symbols of positions, institutions, military formations and units, terms inherent in the military documentation of that time. Text errors that have a semantic meaning are specified in the footnotes. Cross-references are widely used in the collection, allowing us to reveal the sequence, the meaningful relationship of several documents on a certain range of issues.

The scientific and reference apparatus of the collection includes a preface, a list of documents, notes on the text (placed under the line) and the content of documents (located at the end of the collection), a subject-thematic index of orders of NCOs of the USSR, a list of abbreviations, information about officials whose signatures are under orders included in the collection, a list of names.

A key component is the subject-thematic index of all orders of the NPO of the USSR from June 22, 1941, to December 31, 1942. They are grouped according to the most common subject-thematic features and arranged in chronological order.

The team of compilers is grateful to Comrade V. I. Barukhov, A. S. Emelin, T. F. Karyaeva, Yu. L. Kryukova, R. V. Mazurkevich, S. P. Mizonov, N. S. Tarkhova, Samokhina V.I., Shabardin P.M. for their scientific and organizational assistance in preparing the publication.

Major General Zolotarev V. A.

Doctor of Historical Sciences, 

Professor, full member of the Academy of Natural Sciences

(Revisionist propaganda follows. S.M)* - We are not in the business of disseminating revisionist propaganda that has been dominantly going on for over haf a century.