Stalin- Order to improve communications in the Red Army
No. 22. Order to improve communications in the Red Army
No. 0243 July 23, 1941
The experience of the war showed that unsatisfactory command and control of troops is largely the result of poor organization of communications and, first of all, the result of ignoring radio communications as the most reliable form of communications. Command and control of troops, which is based mainly on the telephone, is unstable and unreliable, since if the telephone lines are damaged, it ceases for a long time.
The underestimation of radio communications as the most reliable form of communications and the main means of command and control of troops is the result of the inertia of our headquarters, their lack of understanding of the importance of radio communications in mobile forms of modern combat.
In violation of all rules, we are conducting operational negotiations by telephone, openly naming units, formations, their tasks and locations, names and ranks of commanders. Thus, top secret information falls into the hands of the enemy.
Also, in violation of all rules, our headquarters from top to bottom do not use simple negotiation tables and a coded map over the communication line. All telegraphic correspondence goes through cipher organ, working with a large overload. In the sea of all sorts of documents, often without operational significance, the most important orders, directives, and orders are drowning. They are very late, for 8 - 10 hours, fall into subordinate headquarters and often the planned operation fails.
I order:
1. In the shortest possible time to eliminate the underestimation of radio communications as the main means of command and control of troops in mobile forms of modern combat. Under the personal responsibility of commanders and commissars of units and formations, military councils of armies and fronts, immediately ensure the full use of radio equipment for command and control, with the obligatory observance of the secrecy of transmissions.
Head of the Communications Department of the Red Army Comrade. Peresypkin and the military councils of the fronts and armies to regroup radio equipment as soon as possible in order to unconditionally provide each division and army with two radio stations.
2. Stop once and for all the transmission of operational tasks and orders through open telephone conversations.
3. Unload the cipher organs of compounds and parts from the mass of secondary documents that can be transmitted by using negotiation tables and a coded card. The chiefs and commissars of headquarters must strictly ensure that the cipher organs are not loaded with secondary and large-sized correspondence.
4. Set tables of call signs and simple conventional signals (designations) for negotiations:
General
Staff with fronts - for 10 days;
fronts
with armies - for 5 days;
armies with corps and divisions - for 3 days.
Tables of callsigns and conditional signals in case of failure should be changed immediately.
5. From July 26 p. d. The General Staff to establish and strictly require the coding of maps by the headquarters of the fronts, changing the coding of maps every 10 days. From 25 July s. d. the headquarters of the fronts and armies to encode maps for themselves and their directly subordinate formations for the periods established above for the negotiation tables.
6.
Comrade Peresypkin, Head of the Communications Department of the Red Army, and
the military councils of the fronts, within 5 days, ensure that the staffs of
the fronts and armies are equipped with Bodo devices by dismantling telegraph
equipment in the front line, as well as at the expense of equipment coming from
industry. [35]
When used for communication between the highest headquarters of the Bodo telegraph machines, which are the most important means of telegraph communication in this link, allow negotiations and telegrams in plain text, but using coded charts and call sign tables.
7. To protect the radio stations of divisions, armies and fronts from bullets and shrapnel, the head of the Main Auto-Armored Directorate, Lieutenant General of the Tank Forces Fedorenko and the head of the communications department of the Red Army Comrade Peresypkin, cover the divisional radio stations and the radio operator with armor, two radio stations per division, in the first line division of the Western Front; to mount army and front radio stations in armored transporters, two radio stations per army and front, within 20 days.
8. To the head of the Communications Department of the Red Army, Comrade Peresypkin, within 5 days:
a) to form 4 schools of radio specialists with a contingent of students in Moscow for 1000 people, in Leningrad for 1200 people, in Gorky for 1000 people, in Voronezh for 1000 people;
b) to organize courses at the NKEP radio factories for the training of fitters of military radio stations with a total contingent of students 450 people. BZYu9. General Staff of the Red Army:
a) to staff the schools of radio specialists in Moscow, Leningrad, Gorky, and Voronezh by mobilizing radio specialists from various people's commissariats and departments and personnel of the reserve communications regiments;
b) to select 450 people from the spare parts of the Red Army for training at courses for fitters of military radio stations in Moscow, Gorky, and Voronezh;
c) to equip the schools and courses being formed with command and teaching staff, using the NKEP plants No. 203, 210, 197 and Elektrosignal as a base for industrial training.
10. All personnel mobilized in schools of radio specialists should be checked by commissions consisting of: a representative of the Communications Department of the Red Army, the Main Political Directorate of the Red Army, regional committees of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks, a special department, and the department for staffing the troops of the General Staff of the Red Army.
11. Prohibit the use of signalmen in units of the Red Army not in their specialty. Commanders of units and formations within 5 days to return qualified signalmen (engineers, technicians, radio operators-hearers and operators, body operators {26} , telegraph operators ST-35, etc.) in terms of communication for their use in their specialty.
12.
The military councils of the fronts and armies, the commanders and commissars
of divisions and regiments, within 5 days, carefully check all the personnel of
communications units, primarily those working at radio stations and serving the
headquarters of large military formations, for which to create commissions from
representatives of political agencies, special departments, and communication
chiefs. Remove all dubious people from the units and communications units.
13.
In order to strengthen political work among signalmen, appoint qualified and
proven political workers and commissars to all communications units and
subdivisions.
14. To all commanders and commissars of divisions, military councils of armies and fronts, the head of the Communications Directorate of the Red Army and the head of the Main Armored Directorate of the Red Army, report to me by August 5 this year. on the implementation of this order.
People's
Commissar of Defense of the USSR I. Stalin
Chief
of the General Staff of the Red Army General of the Army G. ZHUKOV
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