Penal Units in the Red Army

ALEX STATIEV

Abstract

This article compares German and Soviet ideas behind raising penal units on the Eastern Front during

World War II and their employment in combat, but focuses on Soviet practice. In an attempt to tighten

discipline in the Red Army, Stalin adopted the basic draconian measures used by Leon Trotsky, his

most bitter rival, during the Civil War of 1918–1922 but he considerably intensified the scale and scope

of repressions thus elevating the brutality on the Eastern Front to new heights.

U strafnikov odin zakon, odin konets:

Koli, rubi fashistskogo brodyagu!

I esli ne poimaesh v grud’ svinets,

Medal’ na grud’ poimaesh ‘Za otvagu’.

[Penal soldiers know only one law:

Kill the fascist bastard!

And if you remain alive,

You will get a medal ‘For Valour’.]

(Vladimir Vysotsky, Shtrafnye batal’ony [Penal Battalions])

IN HIS ORDER NO. 227 ISSUED IN JULY 1942, STALIN CLAIMED that, after the defeats

suffered in the winter of 1941–1942 near Moscow, the Germans had organised ‘over

100 penal companies from soldiers who, being cowardly or unsteady, violated the

discipline and ordered them to atone for their guilt with their blood’. They also formed

about 10 penal battalions from commanders who were likewise considered ‘cowardly

or unsteady’. These commanders were ‘stripped . . . of their decorations, placed . . . at

the most dangerous sectors of the front and ordered . . . to atone for their guilt with

their blood’. Most of what Stalin claimed about the German experience was false, yet

he assessed this alleged experience as positive and ordered the Red Army to organise

penal units of the types he described (Zolotarev 1999a, pp. 277–78). This article begins

with a brief overview of international and Imperial Russian penal practices in order to

set a context for the analysis of the Soviet experience. Subsequently, it examines the

roots of penal units in the Red Army, their strength and composition, the legal

EUROPE-ASIA STUDIES

Vol. 62, No. 5, July 2010, 721–747

ISSN 0966-8136 print; ISSN 1465-3427 online/10/050721-27 ª 2010 University of Glasgow

DOI: 10.1080/09668136.2010.481384

foundations for sentencing soldiers to penal service, the missions assigned to penal

soldiers, their morale, discipline and combat performance.

Soviet penal units are a blank spot in the historiography of World War II. During

the war, the mass media never mentioned them. Research on this topic was banned in

the Soviet era and most archival files containing information on penal units remain

classified at present;1 yet the post-war generations of Soviet people knew from hearsay

that such units existed in the Red Army and many adopted a romanticised image of

penal soldiers that stemmed largely from the ‘Penal Battalions’ song (1964) written by

Vladimir Vysotsky (1938–1980), bard and icon of Soviet pop-culture in the 1960s and

the 1970s. Only during and after Perestroika were a series of orders on penal units,

including Order No. 227, published (Prikaz narodnogo 1988; Zolotarev 1999a;

Zhadobin et al. 2003), followed by memoirs of soldiers who had served in these units

(Pyl’tsyn 2003; Suknev 2006; Gol’braikh 2007). The published orders—a reliable

source—reveal the considerations behind this punitive policy, the legislative acts that

shaped it and the decision-making process related to its enforcement, whereas memoirs

show the human dimensions of penal service: the everyday life of penal soldiers, their

missions, and the relations between officers and men.

Curiously, the scholarly debate on penal units was spurred up not so much by these

publications as by the Shtrafbat [The Penal Battalion] TV serial authored by director

Nikolai Dostal’ and writer Eduard Volodarskii and released in 2004. The serial had a

number of factual errors that outraged war veterans who gave many interviews

challenging the serial’s version of penal service. These interviews were collected by

Russian historians in several volumes (Daines 2008; Daines & Abaturov 2008;

Rubtsov 2007; Pykhalov 2007). The memoirs and interviews published after the fall of

communism, when authors were free to speak the truth, are precious primary sources.

Of course, anecdotal evidence is always problematic, and Russian war veterans are

reluctant to part with the Great Patriotic War mythology. However, the credibility of

post-Soviet memoirs should probably be ranked as equal to those of the German

generals who survived the war (Manstein 1958; Guderian 1950; Friessner 1956): they

can be used as a historical source with caution. These memoirs, interviews and the

published documents are the only primary sources currently available. They give

the opportunity to establish some basic facts that can serve as a starting point for the

research on Soviet penal units. The first steps in this direction have already been taken

by Russian scholars who have engaged in a heated debate. The major points of

contention are the morality of this punitive policy in the context of Soviet martial law,

its rationality in the context of the Eastern Front and the survival rate of penal

soldiers. This article addresses these points.

Penal units existed in all major European armies in the second half of the nineteenth

century. Soldiers who had committed serious offences were court-martialled and either

discharged and sentenced to prison terms as civilians, or they remained with the

colours but served their terms in military jails. In the latter case, the inmates formally

belonged to a penal unit affiliated with a jail. Most armies chose these two types of

1In response to the author’s inquiry about access to files on penal units, the Central Archive of the

Defence Ministry of the Russian Federation replied that these documents will be declassified 75 years

after their issue, that is, beginning in 2017.

722 ALEX STATIEV

punishment. However, the French Army maintained several penal battalions in Algeria

that served as regular units but were subject to punitive restrictions like alcohol bans and

endless drills; other French soldiers could be assigned to unarmed engineer penal

companies. In any case, those sentenced to penal units had to serve long terms, usually

several years. If they behaved well, they could be transferred back to regular units before

the end of their terms. Officers and NCOs who commanded penal units received higher

wages and were given more authority to discipline their subordinates than officers of

regular units of the same rank (Afanas’ev 1890, pp. 109–13).

A memoir of uncertain credibility by an author who wrote under the pen name Roy

Baker describes how he, as a soldier of the French Foreign Legion in the interwar

period, was sentenced to seven years of penal service for hitting a sergeant. He mentions

other culprits sentenced for up to 25 years for desertion or for killing their officers. His

penal battalion was a non-combat chain gang that worked 14 hours a day building roads

and railways in Morocco. The battalion members were subject to extraordinary

punishments that were prohibited in the regular army: they could be whipped for

insubordination and their commanders could sentence them to several days of ‘salt-pot’

rations—salty food with no water—or to hours of wooden clamps that squeezed the feet

until blood circulation stopped. Since Morocco was under martial law, the officers

summarily executed those who refused to work (Baker & Lind 1934, pp. 39–112).

The Russian Imperial Army introduced penal service in 1867. Like the armies of

most other countries, it discharged court-martialled officers and, if the offence was

serious, sent them to civilian jails. Privates and NCOs who committed common

crimes, such as theft and robbery, were also discharged and jailed as civilian criminals.

However, privates and NCOs implicated in military offences such as desertion,

insubordination, hitting a superior or a sentry, or violation of sentry duties were

confined to penal units affiliated with military jails. Conscientious objectors, like the

Dukhobors and Molokans, were also punished in this manner (Brock & Keep 2001,

p. 3; Afanas’ev 1890, pp. 120, 123).2 They were officially called ‘inmates’. The terms of

service in penal units were usually limited to a maximum of three years but in

exceptional circumstances they could be extended up to six years. They could also be

reduced by one sixth of the original sentence if the penal soldiers behaved well. The

inmates were reduced to the ranks and surrendered their decorations for the duration

of the penal service. They engaged in parade drills, bayonet fight exercises, fencing and

gymnastics coupled with the study of field manuals, religious education and literacy

training intended to improve their moral standards. They also had to perform labour

duties to make the jails economically self-sufficient. Regular officers, NCOs and

soldiers guarded the inmates and supervised their training (O distsiplinarnykh 1893,

pp. 67–82; Afanas’ev 1890, pp. 116, 119).

Like the officers in French penal units, their Russian counterparts ‘had ample

leeway to interpret their orders arbitrarily, with little fear of being held to account’

when they imposed punishments; unlike the regulars, penal soldiers could be flogged

for the violation of discipline (Brock & Keep 2001, p. xiii; Afanas’ev 1890, p. 119).

After the end of their penal terms, inmates received back their decorations and

2Dukhobors and Molokans are Russian pacifist Christian sects that oppose the government’s

interference in their lives.

PENAL UNITS IN THE RED ARMY 723

returned to the regular units. They were restored to their ranks if they showed

exemplary behaviour during their penal service; otherwise, as a contemporary author

put it, they ‘continued suffering the consequences of their penalties’ (Afanas’ev 1890,

p. 126). By the end of the nineteenth century, the Russian Army had four penal

battalions with a total strength of about 3,700 men from all branches of the army and

navy (O distsiplinarnykh 1893, pp. 73–74, 82; Afanas’ev 1890, pp. 126, 137).

The Provisional Government established after the February Revolution of 1917

believed that penal units were incompatible with the society of free citizens and

disbanded them. However, the Bolsheviks soon organised a new type of penal units

which were to operate as frontline formations. With the beginning of the Civil War in

the summer of 1918, the Soviet government introduced military conscription. After that,

mass desertion became a major problem for the Red Army and it was fought by drastic

means. In November 1918, Trotsky, People’s Commissar of Defence, ordered:

Obvious deserters should be punished by one penalty only: the firing squad . . . In special

circumstances, . . . a tribunal may put deserters or suspected deserters on probation in regular

units. It is then necessary to attach black collars [to their uniforms] so that probationary

soldiers and their comrades know that in the case of a repeated offence they cannot reckon on

mercy. (Daines 2008, pp. 22–23, 37)

The black collars could be removed only in cases of exemplary conduct in battle.

These measures proved to be ineffective and in January 1919, Trotsky ordered the

formation of penal companies from apprehended deserters. This decision was backed

retroactively by the Military Revolutionary Council in June 1919 when it issued

‘Regulations on Penal Units’. According to the Regulations, soldiers could be sentenced

to penal service by a military tribunal or by the decision of a unit commander. Unlike

penal units elsewhere, and those in Imperial Russia, Soviet penal companies participated

in combat; furthermore, they were assigned to the most dangerous sections of the front.

These soldiers had to surrender their boots for the entire period of probation and instead

received bast shoes (Daines 2008, pp. 31–32, 187, 417, 420).3 They could suffer

extraordinary penalties if they failed to fulfil their missions. The length of penal service

was undetermined but, unlike penal inmates elsewhere, Soviet probationary soldiers

could quickly redeem themselves by displaying courage on the battlefield. If they did so,

their penal units were turned into regular army units. These measures were intended to

not only give deserters and those who retreated without permission a second chance, but

also to make it clear that they would be summarily executed in case of another misdeed.

In addition, penal companies were to serve as a warning to regular soldiers. Trotsky

viewed penal companies and the humiliating black collars and bast shoes as an

alternative to harsher measures, like decimation—the execution of every tenth soldier of

units that retreated without permission—which the Red Army also practised with

Lenin’s approval (Ovechkin 2003, p. 109).

During the first seven months of 1919, military tribunals of the Red Army sentenced

55,000 deserters and draft evaders to penal companies. This included 3,400 of the

4,000 men who had been sentenced to death but whose sentence was commuted to

3Bast shoes are a type of footwear woven from bark.

724 ALEX STATIEV

penal service. Trotsky believed that this policy attained the desired ends. He wrote:

‘Experience has shown that such penal units raised from probationary deserters

fought . . . courageously and even became exemplary’ (Daines 2008, pp. 35, 187).

The end of the Civil War signalled the end of combat penal companies, but non-

combat ones, resembling penal units in other countries, existed in the Red Army during

the interwar period. They were intended to discipline court-martialled rank-and-file

soldiers with penalties that did not exceed the terms of their military service. These units

were small in number and performed mainly hard labour. They were disbanded in 1934,

restored in July 1940, but disbanded again in August 1941, as the Soviet government

reasoned that non-combat penal service in wartime lost its punitive purpose and so

transferred penal soldiers to the regular army (Daines 2008, p. 186).4 Order No. 227 in

1942 restored the type of combat penal units that had existed during the Civil War.

Contrary to Stalin’s claim, the emergence of German penal units on the Eastern

Front was unrelated to the defeat of the Werhmacht at the gates of Moscow. The

German ideas of penal service stemmed from the ‘stab in the back’ myth: the Defence

Law introduced on 31 May 1935 banned ‘rotten apples’ from the Wehrmacht in order

to prevent mutinies like those of 1918 (Klausch 1995, p. 348). According to this law,

court-martialled soldiers and Wehrunwurdigen—civilians eligible for draft but

regarded as unworthy to defend the Reich, such as common criminals and political

prisoners—could not serve in the regular army; nor could those with an undesirable

mentality or soldiers deemed ‘troublemakers’, even if their actions could not be

qualified as crimes. The latter two groups were enlisted into a Sonderabteilung, a non-

combat penal unit; Wehrunwurdigen were confined to civilian jails, while those

convicted by military tribunals served their terms in military prisons or performed

hard labour. In late 1940, Rudolf Lehmann, head of the OKW (Oberkommando der

Wehrmacht) Correctional Department, issued an order requiring military prisoners to

stay in the labour camps and jails for the duration of the war but the sentences

themselves were to be served after its end: wartime hard labour did not affect their

length (Klausch 1995, pp. 361–68). Soldiers of the Sonderabteilung and military

inmates deemed incorrigible were transferred to concentration camps where the

conditions were harsher than in labour camps, or, in extreme cases, they could even be

executed for ‘undermining the military might’ on the basis of a special martial law

passed on 17 August 1938 (Klausch 1995, p. 348).

In September 1940, Hitler came to the decision to raise combat penal units from

military inmates willing to earn pardon by fighting in the most dangerous sectors of

the front. He issued an order about the formation of such units on 21 December 1940,

three days after he had signed the plan for Operation Barbarossa. The Nazi cultural

belief that combat elevated the moral values of individuals, the mystic notion of spilled

blood as redemption for a misdeed, and the desire to mobilise additional manpower

for the Eastern Campaign were at the root of this decision. Military inmates whose

prison terms were over six months and who had no previous convictions were eligible

for recruitment to Bewahrungstruppe 500—probationary penal battalions whose

4In September 1941, the Soviet government began drafting prisoners from the Gulag camps but

they fought as regulars before Order No. 227 established the penal units. Beginning with October 1942,

most of these recruits were sent to penal units (Kuz’michev 2000, pp. 25, 27).

PENAL UNITS IN THE RED ARMY 725

designation started with 500.5 Unlike those who remained in military jails, did hard

labour for the duration of the war, and had to serve their sentences after its end,

probationary soldiers began serving their terms on the day they arrived at the penal

battalions. These battalions belonged to the Wehrmacht but operated separately from

the regular army. Enlistment into penal battalions was voluntary and only those who

were expected to fight well were accepted, but obviously these ‘volunteers’—recruited

in the hard labour camps and jails, and threatened with transfers to concentration

camps—made their choice under duress. Yet, since service in penal battalions gave

military inmates the opportunity to escape hard labour and even earn full pardon,

there was no shortage of volunteers during the victorious campaigns of 1940–1941.

This new policy also offered a chance to some of those sentenced to death to escape

execution: military tribunals could commute the death penalty to service in a penal

battalion. NCOs and officers sentenced by military tribunals were demoted to the

ranks for the duration of their penal terms and served together with penal privates.

Two more types of penal units existed in the German Army. The high casualty rate

on the Eastern Front prompted the German leaders to drop the Wehrunwurdigen

notion and organise the Bewahrungstruppe 999 Brigade in October 1942, which also

belonged to the Wehrmacht. Two-thirds of the penal brigade consisted of non-violent

common criminals, and the remainder were political prisoners (Klausch 1995, pp. 68–

69). It was primarily engaged in non-combat duties. The second type of penal unit, the

Sonderformation Dirlewanger, grew gradually from a company to a brigade. It

consisted of convicted bandits and other violent criminals willing to earn pardon. The

unit belonged to the SS and was named after its commander, Oskar Dirlewanger, a

deranged criminal. Unlike the Bewahrungstruppe 500 battalions, the Sonderformation

Dirlewanger fought not as a frontline unit but engaged first in guarding the Lublin

Ghetto and then, beginning in February 1942, in counterinsurgency in Belorussia

(Klausch 1993, pp. 397–98). Soldiers drafted into both of these units had to serve there

for the duration of their sentences, which were set by civilian or military courts.

To what extent did the German penal practice serve as a model for the Soviet

Union? Stalin stated that the goal of Order No. 227 was termination of desertion and

unauthorised retreat. Every front—the Soviet designation of an army group—had to

organise between one and three penal battalions of 800 men each from officers who,

‘being cowardly or unsteady, violated discipline’. Stalin’s instructions were to ‘place

them in the most dangerous sectors of the front and give them the opportunity to

atone for their crimes against the Motherland with their blood’. In addition to penal

battalions, every army had to organise, for the same purpose, between five and 10

independent [otdel’nye] penal companies with a strength of between 150 and 200 men

from privates and NCOs who had committed similar offences (Zolotarev 1999a, pp.

277–78). Thus, although German and Soviet penal soldiers were to perform similar

missions—fight in the most dangerous sections of the front—there were important

differences in the composition of Soviet and German penal units and in the

motivations of the German and Soviet leaders who decided to raise them. Unlike

German penal battalions, where all convicts served together regardless of the rank

5Soldiers with sentences shorter than six months had to serve their terms in their own unit (Klausch

1995, p. 417).

726 ALEX STATIEV

they had held in the regular army, Soviet penal battalions were all-officer units with

soldiers formerly holding ranks between junior lieutenant and colonel, while

‘independent’ penal companies were reserved for NCOs and privates. Generals were

not liable to this type of punishment. Hitler organised penal units seeking to increase

the Wehrmacht’s manpower by recruiting military inmates who were already in jails

and were willing to earn pardon through exemplary fighting, while Stalin sought to

strengthen the Red Army’s steadiness through a new set of draconian measures

against frontline soldiers who had deserted or retreated without permission, exactly as

the Red Army had done in 1918–1922. We should keep these original goals in mind

while examining the development of German and Soviet penal practices.

According to Order No. 227, offenders with senior rank—battalion and regiment

commanders and commissars—could be sentenced to penal service only by front

tribunals, while junior officers, NCOs and privates could be sent to penal units either

by tribunals or by orders from their superiors. Officers with the minimum rank of

brigade commander could impose this penalty on lieutenants and captains, while

officers with the minimum rank of regiment commander could impose it on NCOs and

privates (Zolotarev 1999a, pp. 312–15). No comprehensive data on the proportion of

soldiers sent to penal units by their superiors as opposed to those sentenced by

tribunals are currently available but the data on the 1st Penal Battalion of the

Stalingrad Front show that this proportion was roughly equal: the former made up

177 of the 331 officers who served there between 1 August and 30 December 1942,

while the remainder were those sentenced after court-martials (Moroz 2008a, p. 140).

On 21 August 1943, Stalin issued Order No. 413 explaining that only NCOs and

privates suspected of grave crimes, which could receive a harsher punishment than a

term in a penal company, should be tried by tribunals (Rubtsov 2007, p. 364). After

this order, most low-ranking offenders were sentenced to penal units by their superiors

without a trial. Their sentences had to be read in front of the units to teach other

soldiers a lesson and warn them of the consequences they could face if they failed to

fulfil their duty.

Soviet tribunals had the choice of sentencing military offenders either to labour

camps or penal units, with a legal foundation for the latter. Article 28, clause 2, of the

Criminal Code of the Russian Federation, along with similar articles of the codes of

other union republics, gave military tribunals and civilian courts the right to suspend

any sentences during wartime, including the death penalty, on the condition that the

convict would fight on the front, thus attempting to earn a pardon (Zolotarev 1999a,

pp. 332–33). As military lawyer Aleksandr Dolotsev put it: ‘To give him [a deserter] a

prison term meant to fulfil his wish’; penal service would be a more appropriate

punishment in wartime (Shved 2008, p. 292). Those to whom tribunals chose to apply

this article, instead of giving them a jail term, could be sentenced to penal units with or

without demotion to the ranks. In the first case, former officers found themselves in

penal companies. If they survived, they returned to the regular army as privates but

their promotion to the officer rank was usually fast. In the second case, officers were

sent to penal battalions; they were still demoted to the ranks but only for the duration

of their penal service. When they returned to their units, their rank was restored,

although they usually received a lower position than they had held before the sentence.

Penal soldiers preserved their party membership but surrendered their decorations for

PENAL UNITS IN THE RED ARMY 727

the duration of penal service; they wore uniforms without insignia and received

privates’ wages. However, if they were killed or gravely wounded and discharged, they

or their families received pensions corresponding to their last position in the regular

army (Gol’braikh 2008, p. 201; Rubtsov 2007, pp. 128–29; Kuz’michev 2000, pp. 26–

27).

Stalin greatly inflated the numerical strength of German penal units when he

described them in Order No. 227. In fact, only a minority of the German military

inmates found themselves in combat penal units. About 180,000 Wehrmacht soldiers

were sentenced to prison terms of over six months between January 1941 and January

1945 and therefore were eligible for penal draft. However, only five German

probationary battalions operated on the Eastern Front and two others on the Western

Front. In total, 27,000 soldiers passed through Bewahrungstruppe 500 battalions, and

28,000 through Bewahrungstruppe 999 Brigade during the war, but the latter rarely

participated in combat. The Sonderformation Dirlewanger had about 5,000 men at the

peak of its strength. The remaining military inmates were Straftruppe, engaged in

tough non-combat jobs like trench digging, burying the dead and clearing minefields

(Klausch 1995, pp. 57, 118, 350, 354; 1993, p. 398). In contrast, the Red Army

organised 65 penal battalions and 1,048 independent penal companies, although many

of these units operated for only several months before they were renamed, disbanded,

or destroyed and never restored (Kuz’michev 2000, pp. 28–33).

Who served in the Soviet penal units? The original targets of Order No. 227 were

deserters or frontline soldiers who had retreated without permission. However, the

legislation on potential penal recruits became progressively more inclusive in the

following years, and eventually most of the penal personnel were soldiers whom Order

No. 227 did not target. Instead, penal units were the service place of those who had

committed any possible offences while serving in the armed forces. In October 1942,

three months after Order No. 227 was issued, the Soviet General Headquarters

(Stavka) extended the scope of those liable to punishment by penal service from

deserters and frontline soldiers to any ‘thieves of military property, drunkards,

malicious violators of the military discipline and other unstable elements’ all over the

Soviet Union, including those in the deep rear (Zolotarev 1999a, pp. 332–33). Stalin’s

Order No. 413 of 21 August 1943 stated that privates and NCOs could be sent to penal

units for any military offence if the regular disciplinary punishments were insufficient

(Rubtsov 2007, pp. 364–65).

Many soldiers in the penal units—deserters, draft dodgers, thieves and various

violators of discipline—deserved to be there. However, the simplified procedure of

sentencing to penal units outside the regular judicial channels ensured the arbitrariness

of the punishment. Typical of Stalinism, once an important order was issued

numerous opportunists among the senior officers turned it into a campaign, rushing to

find as many culprits as possible to demonstrate their zeal. According to Aleksandr

Pyl’tsyn, platoon commander in a penal battalion, many of his soldiers were

people who had committed trivial mistakes, errors without which no serious business was

possible. The rule was to find—or, sometimes even invent—someone to blame . . . and ignore

the fact that often it was not people but circumstances that had to be blamed. (Pyl’tsyn 2003,

p. 56)

728 ALEX STATIEV

As had happened during the purges of 1936–1938, the number of ‘offenders’

snowballed to include those who could be scapegoats for the commanders’ failure to

fulfil an order, those committing minor offences for which earlier they would have

escaped with a few days of arrest, and also personal enemies who had committed no

offences.

Within a week after Order No. 227 was issued, the Stavka learned that the air force

of the Kalinin and Western fronts had lost 140 of 400 fighters in heavy fights: 51 of

them were shot down and 89 were inoperative. Obviously, more aircraft were damaged

than shot down in every air engagement, yet the Stavka sought to make an example.

Its order stated: ‘The Stavka believes that such a high number of aircraft breakdowns

within four or five days is impossible and finds here a clear-cut case of sabotage and

cowardice [shkurnichestvo] among pilots who seek to avoid combat, by pointing to

insignificant breakdowns’. The Stavka ordered such pilots to be organised into penal

squadrons and employed for the most dangerous missions, while ‘incorrigible,

malicious cowards should be immediately discharged from the air force, demoted to

the ranks and sent to penal infantry companies’ (Zolotarev 1999b, pp. 341–42).

Another order, issued by the Stavka six days later, pointed to the fact that 326 of the

400 tanks belonging to the Stalingrad Front were lost as inoperative, 200 of them

because of breakdowns. This order was almost an exact copy of the previous one but

the culprit pilots were replaced in it with culprit tank crews. The order ended with the

instruction to organise penal tank companies that were to be employed in the most

dangerous missions (Zolotarev 1999b, pp. 356–57). No researcher has ever found

evidence of penal aircraft squadrons and tank companies operating on the Eastern

Front, which suggests that the Stavka had second thoughts about organising them,

perhaps because it feared that their personnel could defect to the enemy more easily

than infantry. These two orders must have led to the sentencing of numerous innocent

pilots and tank crews to penal service, and also to sending damaged aircraft and tanks

into battle, and the subsequent sentencing of air force and tank engineers to penal

service when the number of flying accidents and breakdowns of tanks inevitably

increased.

The Stalinist system ensured that Order No. 227 was interpreted in all-embracing

fashion. Russian authors mention many incidents when superiors sent their soldiers

to penal units for minor offences and for actions that could not qualify as offences

even within the framework of the drastic Soviet martial law. For example, the

following all found themselves in penal units: a naval captain who, during tests of a

repaired ship radio, intercepted and translated a speech by Joseph Goebbels; a

soldier who praised a good German machinegun; an air force engineer held

responsible for a fighter that crashed due to pilot error; an air squadron commander

whose two subordinates crashed; a commander of a tank that fell into a ravine

because of the driver’s mistake; Baptists who refused to take up arms; and a cook

who made a poor dinner. A commander of a penal company who had been awarded

his third Red Banner order after fulfilling an important mission was sentenced to two

months of penal service for failure to return the one-day food and vodka rations he

received for soldiers lost in this mission (Daines & Abaturov 2008, pp. 56–57, 65;

Kuleshov 2008, p. 275; Pyl’tsyn 2003, pp. 56, 63; Rubtsov 2007, pp. 65, 69; Kustov

2007, p. 34). There is at least one registered case, but probably many more incidents

PENAL UNITS IN THE RED ARMY 729

when, after the defections of several soldiers, commanders of the platoon, company

and battalion where these soldiers served were all sent to penal units, even though

company and battalion commanders could not possibly monitor the morale of every

soldier under their command (Daines & Abaturov 2008, p. 40). According to

Rubtsov, senior officers interpreted the contraction of venereal disease as a self-

inflicted wound and sent syphilitic soldiers to penal companies. Soon those civilians

who were subject to military regulations were assigned to penal units too:

fortification builders who were late for work, those who damaged telephone wires

during railway repairs, and doctors suspected of groundlessly granting draft

postponement (Rubtsov 2007, pp. 92–93, 97). Sentencing to penal units was

supposed to be done on an individual basis for a particular crime but sometimes it

proceeded in a sweeping manner. In November 1944, Stalin turned the entire 214th

Cavalry Regiment into a penal unit for losing a banner in combat (Daines &

Abaturov 2008, p. 36); perhaps hundreds of soldiers paid with their lives for the

failure of one section to protect a piece of red cloth.

When the Red Army began its advance westwards in 1943, penal units received

numerous reinforcements recruited among the ‘liberated’ POWs and those Soviet

soldiers whom the Germans had cut off in 1941 and 1942 and who were living

afterwards as civilians in the German-occupied regions. All these soldiers were sent to

the ‘screening camps’ set up by Stalin’s order of 27 December 1941 where they passed

through a thorough interrogation by the NKVD about their activities under German

occupation (Khristoforov et al. 2003, p. 29). The vast majority of them were not

implicated in collaboration, but Stalin’s Order No. 270 of 16 August 1941 still

qualified their surrender to the Germans, or the failure to actively resist them, as

treason that could be punished with death (Zolotarev 1999a, pp. 59–60). By 1943,

however, even Stalin realised that the Red Army could not afford to waste this trained

manpower. On 10 March 1943, the Stavka issued Order No. 97 stating that soldiers

who ‘surrendered to the enemy without resistance, or deserted from the Red Army and

remained in the regions temporarily occupied by the Germans, or after becoming cut

off near their place of residence, went home and made no attempt to break out’ had to

be ‘promptly sent to penal units after a brief screening . . . Only those whom

convincing evidence implicates in anti-Soviet activities should be sent to special

[concentration] camps’ (Daines 2008, pp. 218–19).

This policy was further developed on 1 August 1943, when Stalin issued another

order stating that he sought to give ‘an opportunity to commanders who have been in

the territories occupied by the enemy for a long time and did not resist [the Germans]

in partisan units, to prove their allegiance to the Motherland with weapons in their

hands’ and thus created a third type of penal unit: all-officer assault (shturmovye)

battalions (Pykhalov 2007, p. 203). While those in penal battalions were sentenced to

terms from one to three months depending, at least in theory, on the gravity of the

crimes they had committed, officers sent to assault battalions had to stay there for two

months. In all other respects the difference between penal and assault battalions was

marginal: the officers of assault battalions kept their ranks but were temporarily

demoted for the duration of the penal service and their families preserved the

privileges allotted to officer families; assault battalions performed the same types of

missions as penal battalions and their attrition rate was similar. In total, the Red

730 ALEX STATIEV

Army raised 29 assault battalions; most of them operated for several months in 1944

and 1945. The total number of soldiers serving in assault battalions is unknown but by

1 October 1944, 18,382 men were sent to these units from screening camps (Pykhalov

2007, pp. 12–14).

Long before Stalin issued Order No. 227, the Stavka began searching for additional

sources of recruits. By 1941, 1,500,000 prisoners were held in the Gulag camps

(Vladimirtsev & Kokurin 2008, p. 483). The Stavka viewed them as a potential pool of

Red Army manpower. In September 1941, the Head Military Prosecutor Office of the

Red Army suggested that Gulag criminals be conscripted on the basis of Article 28,

clause 2, of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation; their sentence was to be

suspended until the end of the war (Kuz’michev 2000, p. 25). The Decree of the

Presidium of the Supreme Soviet issued on 14 December 1941 encouraged the fronts’

military councils to drop the convictions of conscripted criminals who had

distinguished themselves in combat (Zolotarev 1999a, p. 129). Political prisoners

made up 31% of Gulag prisoners in 1942 but they were banned from conscription and

volunteers were not accepted (Sabbo 1996, p. 1221; Daines & Abaturov 2008, p. 69).

The authorities did draft deported ‘kulaks’ from ‘special settlements’ but not those

sentenced to the labour camps. Unlike the OKW, the Stavka was initially unconcerned

about enlisting common criminals—thieves, bandits, murderers and rapists—into the

regular army. Between 1941 and September 1944, over one million criminals were

conscripted into the Red Army. Most of them were drafted before Order No. 227 was

issued and sent to regular units. Beginning in October 1942, most Gulag prisoners were

sent to penal companies (Kuz’michev 2000, p. 27; Daines & Abaturov 2008, p. 68;

Kokurin & Petrov 2000, p. 428). Some penal companies consisted almost entirely of

criminals. While officers sentenced to penal service without demotion to the ranks were

sent to their units unguarded, those permanently demoted and also Gulag recruits were

delivered to the frontline in cattle cars escorted by NKVD troops with machineguns

mounted on the train platforms; the guard was removed only after they were assigned

to their units (Kuchugin 2007, p. 128; Rubtsov 2007, pp. 73, 370). By 1944 the Stavka

came to the conclusion that the conscription of violent criminals was counter-

productive and, on 26 January 1944, it prohibited the draft of those sentenced for

banditry, armed robbery, and also recidivist thieves and those who had repeatedly

deserted (Pykhalov 2007, p. 308).

With the increasing shortage of manpower, even many collaborators were drafted

into penal companies. On 11 November 1943, the NKVD (Narodnyi komissariat

vnutrennikh del SSSR) and NKGB (Narodnyi komissariat gosudarstvennoi bezopas-

nosti) issued a joint directive ordering the conscription of rank-and-file auxiliary

policemen who had served the Germans but were not implicated in war crimes. Most

of them were subsequently sent to penal units, as were amnestied anti-Soviet guerrillas

(Daines 2008, p. 219; Rubtsov 2007, p. 85). In early 1944, 94 former collaborators

were dispatched to the 128th Independent Penal Company of the 5th Army after

screening, which probably amounted to one third of this company (Moroz 2008b, p.

159). Curiously, the Soviet government trusted those implicated in collaboration with

the enemy more than the victims of the 1936–1938 witch-hunt, most of whom were

devout communists. It gave a chance to earn a pardon to the former but not to the

latter.

PENAL UNITS IN THE RED ARMY 731

It was army commissions rather than tribunals who decided the fate of the soldiers

found after the liberation of the occupied territories, and they did it outside any

regular legal framework (Zolotarev & Sevost’yanov 1999, p. 190). While the

regulations demanded that collaborators who were not implicated in war crimes be

sent to penal companies, they said nothing about those thousands of members of the

auxiliary Ost-battaillonen who had defected to the partisans and fought in their ranks

for months or even years until the regions of their operations were over-run by the Red

Army. Many of them found themselves in penal companies. Stavka’s Order No. 97 of

10 March 1943 and Stalin’s Order No. 413 of 21 August 1943 presumed that only

those soldiers who ‘surrendered to the enemy without resistance’ were liable to

punishment by penal service (Daines 2008, p. 219; Rubtsov 2007, pp. 364–65). The

instructions called for screening commissions to investigate the circumstances of

surrender, and pardon those taken prisoner when wounded, but the commissions

worked in a rush and sent most of these soldiers to penal units on the basis of Order

No. 97, even those who had fallen into German hands because they were severely

crippled (Daines & Abaturov 2008, pp. 62–63; Pyl’tsyn 2003, p. 30).

Thousands of loyal soldiers suffered a plight similar to that of Semen Basov, a

military engineer taken prisoner by the Germans in August 1942. He escaped a POW

camp and walked eastward for several months until he crossed the front. At first, he

was duly assigned to a regular engineering company, but after a period of service he

was sent to a screening camp where an army commission sentenced him to two months

of service in a penal battalion. Petr Zhdanov, another military engineer, was cut off by

the Germans in August 1941 and, having been wounded twice, came home and

worked as a farmer until October 1943. He then joined the partisans and fought as a

platoon commander until the Red Army came to his region. Subsequently, he was

sentenced to one month of penal service. I. Korzhik, a pilot who was shot down over

enemy territory and soon joined a partisan unit, was also sent to a penal battalion

(Moroz 2008a, pp. 144–45; Basov 2007, p. 142; Rubtsov 2007, pp. 152–53). Thousands

of other soldiers who had gone through similar ordeals and conclusively proven their

loyalty faced the same treatment. In this way, the Soviet state equated these cases with

those of enemy collaborators. No evidence exists that army commissions that violated

the screening regulations were ever punished, which means that the state tacitly

approved of it.

Thousands of women served in the Red Army as paramedics, signal and laundry

personnel, anti-aircraft gunners, snipers and combat pilots. They were formally subject

to the same regulations as men. However, few female offenders found themselves in

penal units. Most continued to serve in the regular army with suspended sentences and

the possibility of earning pardon. Some male officers forced women into sexual

relations by threatening to send them to penal units (Rubtsov 2007, pp. 104–5; Kustov

2007, p. 34). In August 1944, two years after Order No. 227 was issued, the Stavka

officially prohibited the sentencing of women to penal service.

Both German and Soviet orders defining the range of possible penal recruits and

sentencing procedures were often violated. Contrary to the OKW’s initial intention to

keep combat penal units free of common criminals and political prisoners, some

soldiers of the Bewahrungstruppe 999 were passed to Bewahrungstruppe 500, despite

resistance from the penal battalion commanders after the penal brigade had been

732 ALEX STATIEV

disbanded in September 1944 (Klausch 1995, pp. 355, 405). Soviet penal and assault

battalions were supposed to be all-officer units but some of them included criminals

and rank-and-file soldiers. Of the 18,382 men sent to assault battalions by 1 October

1944, 16,163 were officers, while the rest were privates and NCOs. Mikhail Suknev

commanded a penal battalion that had an all-officer company, a company of criminals

and a company of amnestied anti-Soviet guerrillas (Pykhalov 2007, p. 14; Suknev

2006, p. 151). On 28 October 1942, the 7th Independent Penal Battalion of the

Northern Group of the Trans-Caucasian Front was simply renamed the 7th

Independent Penal Company of the 18th Army for unknown reasons (Pykhalov

2007, p. 212). According to Order No. 227, regiment commanders could be sent to

penal battalions only after a court-martial. However, on 29 April 1944 Marshal

Georgii Zhukov personally sentenced a colonel, commander of the 324th Guards

Regiment, to a penal battalion for two months (Daines & Abaturov 2008, pp. 34–35).

The sentences that German and Soviet soldiers received after court-martials varied

from several months of jail to the death penalty. However, unlike German soldiers

who were sent to penal battalions for the entire length of their sentence, which could

be several years, Soviet soldiers had to serve in penal units for between one and three

months, depending on the length of their original sentence. Prison terms of up to five,

seven and 10 years were commuted correspondingly to one, two and three months of

penal service, after which convicts were transferred to the regular army as regular

soldiers (Rubtsov 2007, p. 73). Longer prison terms did not exist at that time in the

Soviet Union; only the death penalty was above the 10-year term. The death penalties

of many, perhaps most, soldiers were commuted to three months of service in a penal

unit. P. Barabolya, commander of a platoon in a penal company, states that seven of

his 60 soldiers had suspended death penalties (Barabolya 2008, p. 239). A term of

sentence began once penal soldiers reached the frontline. Thus, a person sentenced to

death could earn a full pardon within three months, and many soldiers did.

In both the Wehrmacht and the Red Army, the personnel of the penal units

consisted of the minority core—regular officers, NCOs and privates who served there

permanently—and the penal majority. Regular staff provided leadership at every level,

and regular privates served in the rear as cooks, paramedics, drivers and stretcher

bearers. In both armies, penal personnel could be promoted to the NCO rank but no

higher (Klausch 1995, p. 400). Penal soldiers could be appointed to officer positions

only in assault battalions. Alexandr Pyl’tsyn, a 19-year-old lieutenant and a platoon

commander from the permanent staff of a penal battalion, had two deputies: a former

colonel and former lieutenant-colonel. His section commanders were a former major

and two former captains (Pyl’tsyn 2003, p. 55).

The proportion of regular soldiers was far higher in the German penal units than in

the Soviet ones. Regulars made up 18.2% of all soldiers who served in German penal

battalions (Klausch 1995, p. 350). According to Russian authors, in the Soviet penal

battalions, only staff officers in battalion headquarters, company and platoon

commanders and commissars, and several privates and NCOs were regular soldiers

(Kuz’michev 2000, p. 26; Rubtsov 2007, p. 107)—between 40 and 60 regulars in a

battalion of about 800 men, or between 5% and 8%. In fact, this proportion was even

lower when penal units arrived at the front because their numerical strength, as a rule,

exceeded that of the regular units since they were expected to have a higher attrition

PENAL UNITS IN THE RED ARMY 733

rate. Ziya Buniyatov, commander of the 123rd Independent Penal Company asserts

that when his unit was ordered to take an important bridge intact, it had battalion

strength—670 soldiers—but by the end of the day, it turned into a platoon of 47 men

(Rubtsov 2007, p. 183). The number of permanent personnel in assault battalions was

even smaller: only the battalion commander, his deputy, the chief of staff and

company commanders were regular soldiers, while the remaining officer and NCO

positions were assigned to penal personnel. However, machinegun, engineer, anti-tank

rifle or trench mortar companies attached to penal battalions on a temporary basis,

increased the proportion of regulars. A SMERSh (SMERSh: Smert’ shpionam) officer

of the front or army headquarters monitored penal units but did not belong to them

(Rubtsov 2007, p. 111).6

The Soviet regulations on penal units stated that permanent staff was supposed to

be selected among ‘the most staunch commanders and commissars who have

distinguished themselves in combat’ (Zolotarev 1999a, p. 312). The German

regulations emphasised similar requirements. Both armies expected that the morale

of the penal soldiers would be lower than that of regulars. To alleviate this trend, the

Wehrmacht appointed as commanders of penal units either members of the Nazi party

or those belonging to the conservative military caste who were expected to be stricter

than other officers (Klausch 1995, p. 352). Commanders of the Soviet penal units did

not differ in practice from other regulars but commissars responsible for the morale of

penal soldiers were appointed even at the level of platoons, at least until 1944, long

after Stalin eliminated their positions in the regular army in October 1942 (Pyl’tsyn

2003, p. 26; Zolotarev 1999a, pp. 326–27).

As a rule, German and Soviet officers were shocked by an assignment to the penal

units because they understood that they faced a greater risk than regulars and because

regulars and civilians transferred their disgust of the criminals to the officers who

commanded them (Klausch 1995, p. 152; Barabolya 2008, p. 238; Savchin 2008, p. 263;

Riskin 2008, p. 281). However, the Soviet officers of penal units received a number of

benefits: wages that were 20% or 30% higher than those of the regulars, twice as fast a

promotion rate, and—in penal battalions—the satisfaction to command former

majors and colonels (Daines & Abaturov 2008, p. 52).7 Whereas regular officers

received no home leaves during the entire war, those from penal units had 10 days of

leave after every three months of service, but few of them lasted long enough to use it

(Kuchugin 2007, p. 128). The commanders of penal units enjoyed more power than

officers of the same rank in the regular army: a commander of a penal battalion had

the powers of a regular division commander; his deputy had the powers of a regular

regiment commander; and company and platoon commanders had correspondingly

the powers of regular battalion and company commanders (Zolotarev 1999a, p. 312).

The commanders of ‘independent’ penal companies had the powers of regular

regiment commanders. When the officers of penal units were transferred to the regular

army, they received positions corresponding to the powers they had in a penal unit

(Pyl’tsyn 2003, pp. 113–14). All these benefits paled against the background of the

6SMERSh was the name of the Soviet military counterintelligence.7In regular units, one day on the front counted for three days of peace time service; in penal

battalions one day on the front counted for six days of peace time service (Pyl’tsyn 2003, p. 106).

734 ALEX STATIEV

enormous attrition suffered by penal units. The 128th Independent Penal Company of

the 5th Army changed five commanders between 1 January and 10 April 1944; they

lasted between 11 and 35 days before being wounded or killed. Between 4 and 10

February 1944, 54 soldiers of this company were killed and 193 were wounded—nearly

its entire personnel (Moroz 2008b, p. 157).

In German and Soviet penal units, punishments for the violation of discipline were

administered outside the military justice system. Although the Bewahrungstruppe 500

had most of the benefits of regular soldiers, with the exception of leaves, punishments

for the offences they committed were more severe, and they could be sent to a

concentration camp or executed with fewer formalities than regulars. Soldiers serving

in Sonderformation Dirlewanger were punished particularly harshly, and nobody

controlled Dirlewanger himself, who could do virtually whatever he wanted with his

soldiers including killing them. Between 136 and 300 German penal soldiers were

executed. Sometimes executions were carried out in front of the penal units to teach

them a lesson (Klausch 1995, pp. 350, 354–55; 1993, p. 400).

In Soviet penal units executions numbered in the thousands. Any officer of a penal

unit, including a platoon commander, had the right to summarily execute any soldier,

including a temporarily demoted colonel, for violations of orders, without any

formalities (Zolotarev 1999a, pp. 312–15). The People’s Commissariat of Defence

described a case when, four days after the 61st Independent Penal Company failed to

attack, three randomly picked soldiers were summarily executed, just to teach the

others a lesson. Although the Commissariat qualified this action as ‘outrageous’, it did

not say whether anyone was punished for it (Rubtsov 2007, p. 82). If such murders

were committed in cold blood long after the action, surely officers summarily executed

many soldiers in the rush of battle. Efim Gol’braikh, deputy commander of a penal

company, described how he and his superior found several soldiers hiding in the trench

when the company went into attack:

We moved towards each other from opposite sides of the trench, holding pistols in both

hands, and . . . shot over the heads of these parasites without taking aim but without

bothering about the safety of their skulls. They promptly got out and ran into the line. Oh,

God! Could I have really done something like this? (Gol’braikh 2007)

However, many permanent officers realised that a large number of their

subordinates, like former POWs in the Soviet case, were innocent victims of a witch

hunt, and most of those who were indeed guilty of various crimes did their best to earn

a pardon. Pyl’tsyn, who was a platoon and then company commander in a penal

battalion for over a year, and perhaps had therefore the moral right to judge his

subordinates, believed that it was wrong to send Soviet POWs to penal units.

However, he also thought that those who found themselves cut off from the Red Army

and did not resist afterwards violated their military oath and had to suffer some

punishment (Pyl’tsyn 2003, p. 30; 2007, p. 114).

Commanders who shared his views were sympathetic to their subordinates, but even

those who did not had to maintain a fine line between enforcing harsh discipline and

maintaining working relations with their soldiers, who were rougher than regulars and

many of whom believed they had nothing to lose. M. Klyuchko, an officer in a penal

PENAL UNITS IN THE RED ARMY 735

company, commented: ‘To be arrogant with them [penal soldiers] meant to be killed in

the first action’ (Savchin 2008, p. 267). Suknev describes how his penal battalion once

stayed in a forest next to a female signal unit. His soldiers, drafted from criminals who

had not seen women for years, asked him to allow them to invite the female soldiers

for an evening party. He faced a tough choice: ‘Had I refused, I’d get a bullet in my

back in the next action’. However, if any scandalous incident had happened during the

party, he would himself become a penal soldier. Having weighed the risks, he chose to

allow the party (Suknev 2006, p. 153).

Fearing to sour the relations with their subordinates over ‘trifles’, the officers turned

a blind eye to the violation of regulations in matters that had no direct relation to the

combat capacity of their units, such as the violence against civilians and German

POWs. The Stavka worried that encounters with civilians would cause trouble, so it

banned penal companies from staying in settlements: they always had to camp

(Gol’braikh 2008, p. 204). The memoirs of officers who commanded penal units report

numerous atrocities committed by penal soldiers against POWs. Suknev’s soldiers

bayoneted 15 prisoners in cold blood and none of them was punished for it (Suknev

2006, p. 171).8 Enemy soldiers who attempted to surrender, especially SS members or

collaborators, had a much better chance of survival if taken by regular rather than

penal units, partly because many penal soldiers had spent years in German POW

camps. As Gol’braikh explains, ‘after all the horrors they had experienced [in German

captivity], all commissars’ talks about humanism were pointless’ (Gol’braikh 2008, pp.

210–11). While some regulars were sentenced to penal companies for the killing of

enemy POWs, penal soldiers did it with impunity.

As a rule, the permanent staff of German and Soviet penal units could be

transferred to the regular army only after being wounded, and they had to undertake a

considerable effort to attain it; otherwise they were assigned back to their penal units

after recovery (Pyl’tsyn 2003, p. 92). As for penal soldiers, they served until they were

killed, wounded or their sentences expired, and then they were transferred to

the regular army. They could also earn an early pardon for outstanding conduct in

action.

In the Wehrmacht, an injury did not necessarily mean release from a penal unit. In

the Red Army, however, any wound, no matter how superficial, automatically secured

the full pardon of a soldier, discharge from the army with honours if the injury was

severe, or transfer to the regular army if it was minor; and, for those who had been

sentenced without demotion, restoration of their rank (Gol’braikh 2008, p. 204). Since

even a slight injury secured pardon, some soldiers mutilated themselves. As Pyl’tsyn

describes it,

The inventors of this method threw a hand grenade into a wooden barn . . . and then poked

out its fragments from the walls. Afterward they took out a bullet from a submachine gun

cartridge, poured out half of the gunpowder and put a fragment in place of the

bullet . . . During the next barrage they shot the submachine gun through their soft tissues

and received a light wound. (Pyl’tsyn 2003, p. 66)

8See also Gol’braikh (2008, pp. 209–10) and Pyl’tsyn (2003, pp. 37, 152).

736 ALEX STATIEV

Those implicated in this offence were usually executed if the wound was severe or

received additional penal terms if they still could serve after recovery (Suknev 2006,

pp. 157–58; Shved 2008, p. 292).

Those Soviet soldiers whose penal terms had expired were automatically transferred

to the regular army and received back their decorations and rank if they had been

sentenced without demotion. However, their platoon or company commanders filed

transfer requests only after the end of their terms, and they had to continue to fight

until these requests were signed by the front or army commander (Kuchugin 2007, p.

129). During the waiting period many of them were killed or wounded. Those who had

been sent to penal units by the orders of their commanders and ended their penal term

uninjured, received full pardon. However, those who had been sentenced to a prison

term by tribunals could receive full or partial pardon. Only those who fought well had

their convictions dropped; the rest still had a suspended sentence when they were

transferred to the regular army. As F. Podoinitsyn, chair of the Military Tribunal of

the 1st Ukrainian Front put it,

only if they show themselves in the new [regular] unit as worthy defenders of the

Motherland, will the military tribunal of the front again examine the request of the unit

commander, and a new decision of the tribunal can completely waive their sentence. (Rubtsov

2007, p. 147)

Both the German and the Red commanders often pressed released soldiers to remain

in a penal unit as permanent staff assigned to rear duties (Klausch 1995, p. 190; Moroz

2008b, p. 154).

If the German or Soviet penal soldiers performed outstandingly, their platoon or

company commanders could request their pardon before the end of their penal terms.

In this case, German penal soldiers could get a full or partial pardon; this depended on

how well they fought, and also on the gravity of their offences. If they received a full

pardon, they returned to the regular units with their rank restored; in the case of a

partial pardon, their penal term could be shortened (Klausch 1995, pp. 187, 351).

Soviet soldiers who distinguished themselves in battle received a full pardon, and if

they had a conviction by a military tribunal, it was dropped regardless of the length of

their sentence. For example, a cadet who had killed an officer and was sentenced to a

penal company with a suspended death penalty returned to his unit merely two weeks

later with a For Valour medal. In both armies, pardon orders, like sentences to penal

battalions, were read in front of the units to teach other penal soldiers a lesson

(Klausch 1995, p. 192; Kustov 2007, p. 41).

However, it was difficult to earn a pardon in both armies. Most of those who left the

penal units before the end of their terms were wounded. As for uninjured solders who

distinguished themselves in battle, their pardon requests went up the military

bureaucracy to the army commander in the German case and to the front commander

in the Soviet case, after which they travelled back. The requests had to be approved at

every level of command (Pyl’tsyn 2003, p. 44). There were no clear guidelines

regarding what should secure an early pardon. While in the Wehrmacht such requests

were typically granted, in the Red Army their fate depended not only on the deeds of

the penal soldiers but also on the personalities of their superiors. Some of them, who

PENAL UNITS IN THE RED ARMY 737

had suffered themselves from the arbitrariness of Soviet justice, like generals

Konstatnin Rokossovsky or Aleksandr Gorbatov, granted pardons generously.

Gorbatov pardoned an entire penal battalion after its successful raid on the enemy

rear despite the fact that the battalion suffered relatively light casualties in this

mission: between 50 and 60 of its 800 soldiers were killed or wounded (Pyl’tsyn 2003,

pp. 32–39, 42, 50, 160; 2007, pp. 116–17).9 Other senior officers, like Commander of

the 65th Army Pavel Batov, believed that penal soldiers deserved their plight and

rejected most early pardon requests. According to unwritten rules, soldiers who

destroyed an enemy tank had to be pardoned. However, in Batov’s army if the penal

crew of an anti-tank rifle knocked down a German tank, the soldier who fired the rifle

was pardoned but not the one who loaded it (Pyl’tsyn 2003, pp. 43, 151).

Despite the absence of clear regulations on the pardons of uninjured soldiers in both

armies, the response to pardon requests was faster in the Red Army than in the

Wehrmacht, which was a matter of vital importance given the attrition rate of penal

units. In the German case, the whole process typically lasted from six weeks to several

months, and it took more time to process the cases of sentenced officers than NCOs

and privates because pardon requests concerning former officers had to be sanctioned

by the OKW, which took on average a month longer (Klausch 1995, p. 189). In the

Red Army, according to Russian authors, the matter was decided within days

(Gol’braikh 2008, p. 211; Rubtsov 2007, p. 144). Yet, only a small minority of soldiers

ended their penal terms without injury; especially those with sentences of over one

month. No comprehensive data on the turnover of penal personnel exist but the

statistics on the 1st Independent Penal Company of the 57th Army show that of the

3,348 penal soldiers who passed through it between August 1942 and September 1945,

796 (23.8%) were killed; 1,939 (57.9%) were wounded; 457 (13.6%) were pardoned for

outstanding conduct; 117 (3.5%) were released after they served their terms; and 39

(1.2%) were missing in action or deserted (Moroz 2008b, p. 163).10

Penal soldiers could be decorated but they received fewer and lower-ranking

decorations compared to regulars. Of the 3,348 penal soldiers who passed through the

1st Independent Penal Company of the 57th Army between August 1942 and

September 1945, only 43 men were decorated—a much lower proportion than in a

regular unit (Moroz 2008b, p. 163). Most received For Valour or For Outstanding Fight

medals, and in truly exceptional cases, Glory, Red Star or Red Banner orders. Officers

serving in penal battalions were reportedly unhappy when they were awarded the

Glory order, because it was reserved for privates and NCOs and it betrayed their penal

sentence after they returned to the regular units (Pyl’tsyn 2003, p. 43). At least one

penal soldier, Vladimir Karpov, received the top Soviet decoration, Hero of the Soviet

Union. Officers of the penal units filed several more requests to award this decoration

to their soldiers but their superiors replaced them with lower-ranking orders

(Kuz’michev 2000, pp. 26–27). A decoration considerably increased the chances of

German and Soviet soldiers gaining pardon before the end of their terms, but did not

9See also Daines and Abaturov (2008, p. 125).10This company was renamed the 60th Independent Penal Company in November 1942 and then

into the 128th Independent Penal Company of the 5th Army in November 1943 (Pykhalov 2007, p.

263).

738 ALEX STATIEV

guarantee it; many decorated soldiers continued to serve in penal units until they were

wounded or killed (Pyl’tsyn 2003, p. 43; Daines 2008, p. 313). In the German 500th

Battalion, 70 men received decorations during the spring of 1943 but only 31 persons

were scheduled for pardon. Only in Soviet assault battalions did a decoration lead to

automatic pardon and transfer to a regular unit (Klausch 1995, p. 419; Pykhalov 2007,

pp. 203–5).

German and Soviet penal battalions were supplied with food and weapons as well as

were regular units, including the daily 100 grammes of vodka ration in the Soviet case.

According to Pyl’tsyn they ‘always had plenty of weapons, including the most modern

ones’ (Pyl’tsyn 2003, p. 135). However, independent penal companies had fewer

automatic weapons than regulars, and sometimes they were so short of rifles that only

some of their soldiers received them while the rest were armed merely with bayonets

(Rubtsov 2007, pp. 110, 119; Pyl’tsyn 2003, pp. 77, 135, 136; Moroz 2008a, p. 138;

Babchenko 2008, p. 168).

Every penal unit was periodically depleted, after which it was withdrawn to the rear

to receive reinforcements. The training of German penal battalions and Soviet penal

companies was below average because penal soldiers arrived from all three arms—land

forces, air force and navy—and most of them had no infantry skills. Of the 447 men

received by the German 500th Battalion in 1943, 31% were infantrymen, 22% were

other soldiers of the land forces (tank crews, gunners, signal corps, pioneers and

drivers), 33% were sailors and 14% came from the air force. The composition of

Soviet penal units was similar (Moroz 2008a, p. 138; Pyl’tsyn 2003, p. 51). Since all of

them had to fight as infantry, German penal battalions were trained for about a month

before being sent to action. As for their Soviet counterparts, they were trained for

between one and four weeks ‘if the situation allowed it’ (Klausch 1995, p. 419;

Rubtsov 2007, p. 119). One penal company, consisting of sailors, who had no idea how

to fire a machinegun or an anti-tank rifle, was trained for only two weeks before being

sent to the front (Barabolya 2008, p. 241). Some non-infantry penal soldiers

understood that they had to acquire infantry training to survive but others scorned it.

The cohesion within penal units was weak because the quick turnover of personnel

frustrated the establishment of comradely relations and precluded the emergence of

‘primary groups’—soldiers who formed a bond and could rely on each other in battle

(Daines & Abaturov 2008, p. 72).

Soviet penal battalions probably had a superior combat performance compared to

regular ones since these were all-officer formations; they also had much more to gain if

pardoned and did their best to return to the positions held before their sentence. Those

who commanded Soviet and German penal battalions claim that most of their soldiers

fought well (Klausch 1995, p. 353). The combat performance of Soviet penal

companies could not have been impressive. Their soldiers focused mostly on their own

survival rather than earning pardons through feats and many of them were criminals

with no patriotic sentiments.

While the Sonderformation Dirlewanger engaged mainly in counterinsurgency and

the killing of Soviet, Polish and Slovak civilians (Klausch 1993, pp. 397–98, 401–2),

Bewahrungstruppe 500 and Soviet penal units fought always as frontline formations.

They performed missions that were especially difficult such as frontal assaults, the

defence of positions where major enemy strikes were expected, plugging enemy

PENAL UNITS IN THE RED ARMY 739

breakthroughs, rearguard fights, capturing bridgeheads and feigned attacks. Penal

units often conducted reconnaissance in force, to pinpoint the enemy machinegun and

artillery positions and also the borders between enemy units where their defences were

weaker. Some particularly reliable penal soldiers were ordered to take enemy prisoners

before major offensives; a tough mission that could cost dozens of lives.

These missions could be carried out independently or penal units could be attached

for a short time to elite formations. However, unlike regular formations that only

occasionally performed difficult missions, penal units engaged in them almost

permanently. This caused them to suffer far heavier casualties. The German 500th

Battalion lost half of its strength in its first engagement on 25 June 1941, at a time

when the Red Army was in full retreat. The 550th Battalion suffered similar casualties

when it entered action on 22 March 1942, and so did two companies of the 540th

Battalion during their first missions on 3 December 1941 and 21 January 1942,

respectively (Klausch 1995, pp. 185, 187, 209). The 561st Battalion arrived at the

Eastern Front in May 1943; it was frequently attached to different divisions and lost

453 men out of 700 within three months. Since the permanent staff had to set an

example for their soldiers, they suffered, proportionately, even higher casualties than

their subordinates: the 560th Battalion lost 158 penal soldiers and 64 permanent

personnel killed, wounded and missing between 21 January and 15 March 1943

(Klausch 1995, pp. 399, 409–14, 415).

G. Krivosheev claims that the average monthly casualties of penal units in the

offensive operations of 1944 were between three and six times as high as those of the

regular army in the same operations (Krivosheev 2001, p. 441) but no reliable statistics

on the casualties suffered by penal soldiers exist. According to the testimonies of those

who served in Soviet penal units, some of these units were almost entirely eliminated

during a single mission. The 53rd Independent Penal Company had 520 men before it

engaged in offensive action between 9 and 20 March 1943; 100 men were killed and 369

wounded during this operation, a 90% loss of strength (Daines & Abaturov 2008, pp.

127–33). The 275th Independent Penal Company that spearheaded the breakthrough

near Rogachev in Belorussia, lost 323 of its 350 soldiers killed or wounded, or 92% of

its personnel; only one officer of the permanent staff survived uninjured (Daines &

Abaturov 2008, p. 115; Pyl’tsyn 2003, p. 33). The 123rd Independent Penal Company

was ordered to break through three enemy defence lines in January 1945 and take a

mined bridge intact. By the time they took the bridge, the company had lost 623 of 670

soldiers, or 93%. All the survivors were awarded decorations, and the company

commander received the Hero of the Soviet Union title, although the source does not

say whether the survivors were pardoned after this action (Rubtsov 2007, p. 183). N.

Gudoshnikov, a penal company officer, wrote: ‘Our company lasted one or two, rarely

three serious engagements. Virtually nobody survived for more than a month during

offensives’ (Daines & Abaturov 2008, p. 114). Pyl’tsyn commanded at first a platoon

and then a company in a penal battalion from December 1943 to April 1945. Having

survived for such a long period, he regarded himself as exceptionally lucky. He was

wounded three times; besides, a mine fragment once hit the sub-machinegun on his

chest, and a bullet hit the steel spoon in his boot (Pyl’tsyn 2003, pp. 25, 99).

The survival rate of penal soldiers was quite uneven and depended on many factors,

first of all, on the nature of the missions they were ordered to perform. Some penal

740 ALEX STATIEV

soldiers were lucky if the division or army commanders, to whom their unit was

attached, miscalculated where the toughest fighting would occur and assigned them

relatively easy tasks. Pyl’tsyn’s battalion once stayed on defence for over two months

in the direction of an expected enemy breakthrough that never materialised (Pyl’tsyn

2003, p. 79).

The survival of penal soldiers also depended on the attitude of senior commanders.

It was probably fair to assign the most difficult missions to violators of discipline

given that these missions had to be accomplished anyway. However, many generals

viewed penal soldiers merely as cannon fodder. As Barabolya maintained, ‘Some

zealous commanders humiliated the dignity of penal personnel with impunity and

threw men to certain death, which was not always required by combat expediency’

(Rubtsov 2007, p. 113). Vladimir Karpov wrote: ‘The first penal companies perished

senselessly; the words of the order ‘‘to atone with blood’’ were perceived and executed

literally. Penal soldiers were sent into battle without artillery barrage or any other

support’ and their units were cut to pieces. Karpov’s company was employed in this

fashion and lost 189 of 198 men in one mission (Daines & Abaturov 2008, pp. 93,

113; Daines 2008, p. 310; Babchenko 2008, p. 168; Barabolya 2008, pp. 243, 245;

Gavrilenko 2008, p. 259). Many other soldiers mention similar actions that ended

with similar results (Rubtsov 2007, p. 190; Suknev 2006, pp. 122, 163; Daines 2008, p.

434). According to Mikhail Klyuchko, platoon commander of the 322nd Independent

Penal Company, no one was concerned how many penal soldiers died—their actions

had to reduce the casualties of regular units (Savchin 2008, p. 267). It is hard to judge

whether there was a deliberate sacrifice of penal soldiers, but Pyl’tsyn describes how

Batov, commander of the army to which his penal battalion was attached,

deliberately sent its soldiers—all of them temporarily demoted officers—across a

minefield, where they suffered 80% casualties. Pyl’tsyn, who also advanced across the

minefield but survived without a scratch, regarded this order as criminal and claims

that tanks with ploughs for making passages in the minefield were actually available.

The survivors of this action were not pardoned because Batov would not release an

uninjured soldier from a penal unit. Significantly, Pyl’tsyn does not reproach his

superiors for a mission in which the penal company he commanded spearheaded the

attack across the Oder River. Only four men survived without injury by the time they

had captured the bridgehead, while Pyl’tsyn himself was gravely wounded in the head.

At that time the division to which his battalion was attached did whatever it could to

ease the assault, but the mission was exceptionally difficult. Those four men were

pardoned and transferred to the regular army (Pyl’tsyn 2003, pp. 141–49, 221,

223, 236).

Some soldiers, however, survived several rounds in penal units. Private Fedor

Golovachev was sentenced to a three-month penal term for plunder in January 1943.

A few days later he received a light wound and returned back to his unit, where he beat

up the deputy regiment commander who had sent him to the penal company.

Consequently, he received another three-month penal term, which he served and was

released from uninjured. In August 1943, he had a conflict with another officer and

found himself again in a penal company. Two months later he was gravely wounded,

after which he was discharged with honours, having received the medal For

Outstanding Fight (Kuz’michev 2000, p. 34).

PENAL UNITS IN THE RED ARMY 741

Heavy casualties undermined the morale of German and Soviet penal units that

were also affected by the situation on the fronts. During the first two years of the

Bewahrungstruppe existence the soldiers fought hard to earn pardons, but then their

morale plummeted because they began to perceive themselves as condemned to death

for a lost cause (Klausch 1995, pp. 354–55). The westward advance of the Red Army

and the shortage of manpower led to an increasing recruitment of criminals into

German penal battalions in 1944. This resulted in the rise of desertions, self-

mutilations and unauthorised retreats, which in turn multiplied the severe penalties

imposed on German soldiers. In the period from the creation of the Bewahrungstruppe

500 battalions in early 1941 until September 1944, between 600 and 1,000 of their

soldiers were sent to concentration camps, whereas between October 1944 and the end

of the war, 1,000 more penal soldiers were transferred to the camps (Klausch 1995, p.

357).

Bewahrungstruppe 999 was never reliable. The first attempt to use part of the penal

brigade in combat in North Africa was disastrous: it surrendered to the Allies without

a fight in May 1943. The second attempt to employ it in combat, this time on the

Eastern Front in early 1944, brought about similar results, after which the unit was

disbanded. Some of its personnel were sent to labour camps and others were passed to

the Sonderformation Dirlewanger. By the end of 1944, German leaders searched for

manpower so desperately that they recruited 800 more political prisoners and also

enlisted them into the Sonderformation Dirlewanger. Paradoxically, political prisoners,

most of them anti-fascists, found themselves in an SS brigade. This destroyed the

morale of the brigade and when, in December 1944, it was deployed for the first time

against the Red Army, 500 of its 770 soldiers recruited from political prisoners

defected to the enemy, including one entire company (Klausch 1993, pp. 402, 407–8).

In the Soviet case, there was a considerable difference in the morale of penal

battalions and companies. Soviet senior commanders to whom penal units were

attached perceived penal battalions as politically reliable. Pyl’tsyn describes how in

February 1944 his penal battalion was ordered to infiltrate enemy positions, cut

German communication lines, disorganise the rear of German divisions and pin them

down, giving regular Soviet forces the opportunity to attain a major breakthrough.

The penal battalion spent five days in the enemy rear, blew up several bridges,

attacked several German columns and destroyed a divisional headquarters; nobody

defected despite the soldiers having a greater opportunity to do so in the enemy rear

than from the Soviet trenches (Pyl’tsyn 2003, pp. 32–39). The morale of the penal

companies, however, was often low and their soldiers deserted more often than

regulars (Gol’braikh 2008, p. 205; Gavrilenko 2008, p. 258).

On 7 July 1945, after the end of the war in Europe, the Supreme Council of the

USSR amnestied all soldiers with suspended sentences. The amnesty freed soldiers

who were currently serving in penal units but did not eliminate this institution, and

new culprits filled the vacant positions after the amnesty. Only after the victory over

Japan were combat penal units disbanded (Daines & Abaturov 2008, pp. 82, 134).

After the war, the Red Army returned to utilising the type of penal service that existed

in all other armies—small in numbers and engaged in unpleasant non-combat

missions—and has continued to exist in this form in the Russian Army until the

present day.

742 ALEX STATIEV

The contribution of penal soldiers to the Soviet war effort could be assessed on the

basis of their proportion in the frontline Soviet forces. All Russian authors who touch

upon this topic cite G. Krivosheev who refers to an archival document that gives the

annual data on the number of penal soldiers shown in Table 1.

Since the annual strength of the frontline Red Army formations fluctuated between

5,000,000 and 6,500,000 men, with an average of 5,750,000 men (Krivosheev 2001, p.

246), Krivosheev’s data suggest that penal soldiers made up about 3% of the frontline

units in 1943, and 2.5% in 1944, and had lower proportions in 1942 and 1945.

However, these data raise serious doubts about their credibility because they

contradict common sense and other data given in Krivosheev’s study. In 1942, the

Stavka persistently pressed the frontline divisions to enforce Order No. 227 thus

turning it into a major political campaign. Post-purge Stalinist culture presumed that

in order to survive, superiors at all levels had to show the utmost zeal in any political

campaign, and this zeal usually peaked soon after the beginning of a campaign, and

then it gradually subsided. In view of this culture, the number of soldiers sent to penal

units in 1942 given by Krivosheev (24,993) seems improbable: it is too low as

compared to the other years. Furthermore, a minority, of the 157,000 Gulag prisoners

conscripted in 1942 (Daines & Abaturov 2008, p. 68) were sent to penal companies—

probably more than the total number of penal soldiers in 1942 cited by Krivosheev.

The numbers of penal soldiers given by Krivosheev for the other war years seem also

too low: most of the 171,220 prisoners drafted in 1943 from Soviet jails, and an

unknown number of prisoners drafted from the Gulag (Kokurin & Petrov 2000, p.

428),11 were sent to penal companies but soldiers’ memoirs leave the impression that

prisoners made up a minority of the penal personnel. As for the data related to 1944,

Krivosheev states first that 143,457 soldiers fought in penal units that year and then

that the total casualties of penal units, including permanent staff, equalled 170,298

men. Permanent staff made only a small fraction of penal units; and some penal

soldiers, perhaps between 15% and 20%, survived their terms uninjured.12

Furthermore, in another section of his book, Krivosheev states that during the

TABLE 1NUMBER OF SOVIET PENAL SOLDIERS IN WORLD WAR II, ACCORDING TO KRIVOSHEEV (2001, P. 441)

1942 1943 1944 1945 Total

24,993 177,694 143,457 81,766 427,910

11This NKVD report shows ‘incomplete’ data on the number of prisoners conscripted into the Red

Army by September 1944. According to it, 859,274 prisoners were drafted from the Gulag camps and

171,220 prisoners were conscripted in jails in 1943, making in total 1,030,494 prisoners, a number that

excludes those drafted from jails during the first eight months of 1944. According to Daines and

Abaturov, most of these prisoners were conscripted before Order No. 227 was issued, and they were

sent to regular units (Daines & Abaturov 2008, p. 68). However, beginning with October 1942 most

drafted prisoners were sent to penal companies (Kuz’michev 2000, p. 27).12See the example of the 1st Independent Penal Company of the 57th Army (Daines & Abaturov

2008, p. 163).

PENAL UNITS IN THE RED ARMY 743

Second World War 422,700 soldiers were sentenced to penal units (Krivosheev 2001,

p. 246). This suggests that Table 1 may refer only to Red Army personnel sentenced to

penal units by tribunals and sent there by their superiors13 but excludes the Gulag

prisoners and the officers serving in assault battalions; and even then the number of

sentences in 1942 seems too low if compared to the subsequent years. Krivosheev,

therefore, substantially understates the number of penal soldiers, and, accordingly,

their contribution to the war effort, which, however, cannot be quantified with the

sources that are currently available.

Conclusion

The Red Army adopted some punitive policies used by other armies, such as the

confinement of court-martialled soldiers to penal units, the possibility of early

release due to exemplary behaviour and the exceptional powers given to officers

commanding penal units. However, unlike most penal soldiers elsewhere, their Soviet

counterparts were not inmates sentenced to jail for long terms but probationary

fighters, who had to redeem themselves within a short timeframe by fighting in the

most dangerous sectors of the front. The Red Army pioneered this approach during

the Civil War. Soviet penal soldiers, unlike those of the French Foreign Legion,

could not be subjected to corporal punishment but their life expectancy was much

shorter.

The German experience, distorted by Stalin in Order No. 227, was not the model for

the Soviet penal units, as Stalin claimed, but merely an excuse he used to restore a

series of draconian disciplinary measures the Red Army had employed during the Civil

War. The German and Soviet leaderships had fundamentally different ideas driving

the formation of penal units. The Nazi leaders sought to separate the ‘black sheep’ and

thus preserve the morale of the regular army. They also viewed the employment of

penal units in combat as a purgatory measure, meant to cleanse the Herrenvolk from

the dregs of society, sacrificing some of them in tough missions that had to be

performed anyway, while transforming others into exemplary soldiers (Klausch 1993,

p. 400). The Soviet leadership had no such motivations; they sought merely to tighten

the discipline of frontline Soviet soldiers. In both of these opposing armies, penal units

provided those who had ‘failed’ with the opportunity to earn pardon in battle.

However, service in a German penal combat unit was presented as an option awarded

only to those who deserved it and was offered to convicts who were already in jail. The

Stavka, in contrast, interpreted penal service primarily as a means of intimidation

intended to preclude desertion and unauthorised retreat.

Over time, the understanding of the purpose of penal units changed in both armies.

The shortage of manpower forced the OKW to draft all sorts of criminals and even

political prisoners into penal units. The Stavka increasingly expanded the number of

misdeeds punishable by penal service, and, beginning in 1943, the original targets of

Order No. 227—deserters and those who retreated without order—were only a small

13The difference between this number and that given in Table 1 (427,910) can probably be attributed

to imprecise data on men sent to penal units by their superiors—these were registered less accurately

than those sentenced formally by a tribunal.

744 ALEX STATIEV

minority of the penal personnel. The largest groups were soldiers who had made trivial

mistakes, those cut off by the Germans in 1941–1942 and prisoners recruited in the

Gulag. Both German and Soviet penal units performed the most difficult missions and

their casualty rates were similar. Although Germany sent far fewer soldiers, and

especially officers, to penal units than the Soviet Union,14 it was harder for a German

soldier to get out of a penal unit than for a Soviet soldier.

To what extent did the reintroduction of combat penal units in the Red Army

increase the brutality on the Eastern Front? The ever-expanding legislation on

misdeeds punishable with penal service further narrowed the small margin of error

tolerated in the Red Army, which increased the weight of the penalties and the

arbitrariness of punishment. The ensuing witch-hunt, an inevitable outcome of

Stalinist political culture in any punitive campaign, ensured that a large part of the

order’s victims were innocent people. But the Soviet leaders perceived this as an

acceptable price for the desired ends—the tightening of discipline—and, according to

the nearly unanimous opinion of Soviet veterans as expressed in their memoirs, the

threat to be sent to a penal unit did strengthen discipline. The order also led to an

enormous waste of valuable manpower because those with special skills but without

infantry training—officers and men from tank, artillery, signal, naval and air force

units—were deliberately used merely as a cannon fodder.

However, the measures stemming from Order No. 227 should be assessed in the

context of the Soviet martial law. The Red Army manuals stated that Soviet soldiers

did not surrender under any circumstances; those who surrendered committed a grave

crime (Zolotarev & Sevost’yanov 1999, p. 169). Order No. 270, passed on 16 August

1941, and other similar orders interpreted all those who were uninjured and taken

prisoner, those who did not resist the Germans after being cut off from their armies,

and certainly those who had joined a collaborator unit as traitors liable to execution.

Penal units gave these soldiers a chance to earn a pardon, and most of them did. In

total, 994,300 Soviet soldiers received various sentences during World War II, of them

422,700 were sent to penal units, 436,600 were dispatched to labour camps and 135,000

were executed (Krivosheev 2001, p. 246).15 Those with a choice between penal service

and the firing squad certainly preferred the former. It is difficult, however, to ascertain

whether those sentenced to the Gulag camps had a better chance of survival than penal

soldiers. The compounded death rate among Gulag prisoners in 1941–1945 equalled

68.6% (Kokurin & Petrov 2000, p. 428), which was probably double the average

mortality of penal soldiers,16 but many of those who were released from penal units

died after their transfer to the regular army. Conversely, those penal soldiers who

survived the war, even if they were discharged from army service after suffering a

serious injury in penal units, returned to society as respectable citizens and victors with

all the benefits of war veterans. Most of those who received long Gulag terms were

14For instance, of 447 men assigned to the 500th Battalion in 1943, only four were former officers

and 60 were former NCOs (Klausch 1995, p. 419).15The number of penal soldiers probably excludes the officers serving in assault battalions, and it

contradicts the total number of penal soldiers given by the same author in the same book, which is

427,910 (Krivosheev 2001, p. 441).16See an example of the 1st Independent Penal Company of the 57th Army (Daines & Abaturov

2008, p. 163).

PENAL UNITS IN THE RED ARMY 745

‘ground into camps’ dust’,17 and the minority who survived returned as cripples with a

stigma and a mental trauma that poisoned the rest of their lives.

University of Waterloo

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PENAL UNITS IN THE RED ARMY 747

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