CHAPTER 5

“A Weapon Is Your Honor and Conscience”

Killing in the Red Army

Every soldier knows perfectly well the caprices of their own weapon.

—Ian Palkavneks

Mansur Abdulin begins his memoirs with a reflection on the first two shots he took at the front: “War, the front is shooting. From mortars, machine guns, submachine guns, artillery pieces… I took my first shot in combat on November 6, 1942 on the South-Western Front.” His unit, cobbled together from men who had not seen combat, had just arrived at the front. He describes in detail how he stalked enemy soldiers, then, shaking and sweating uncontrollably, pulled the trigger and missed. A total loss of composure immediately followed, sending him to the bottom of his foxhole on the verge of tears and filling him with self-loathing. He feared that he would die uselessly, “without killing at least one of them,” and that his comrades would see him quivering at the bottom of the trench. He gathered himself together and coolly took aim, pulled the trigger, and saw an enemy soldier crumple like a rag doll. The commissar of his unit arrived shortly thereafter, awarding Abdulin a signed notebook, with the inscription: “Abdulin, Mansur Gizatulovich, was the first to open his boevoi schёt [combat tally], destroying a Hitlerite in honor of the twenty-fifth anniversary of [the] Great October [Revolution].” Abdulin was immediately chosen as the head of the Komsomol organization of his regiment and wrote to his father with pride.1

Between 1941 and 1945, millions of other soldiers would be faced with the same moment of truth. Killing was a duty in the Red Army: the inability to kill was scorned, and soldiers were encouraged to keep competitive tal-lies of their kills. The government provided soldiers with uniforms, rations, and the means to create shelter in order to use their weapons to defend the country and destroy the enemy. Yet many soldiers were not up to the task. A few months before Abdulin took his first shot, a battalion commander complained to the war correspondent Vasilii Grossman: “Sixty percent of our soldiers have not taken a single shot since the war began. The war goes on because of heavy machine guns, battalion mortars, and the bravery of a few individuals.”2 The Red Army was forced to take undertrained soldiers like Abdulin and turn them into efficient killers, often instructing them directly at the front. Soldiers needed to learn to use, trust, and love their weapons.

FIGURE 5.1 Red Army soldier receiving his weapon (m.1944 Carbine). Mark Markov-Grinberg, The Oath of War © 1943 Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.

In significant ways, the Soviet project was a dialogue between humans and machinery.³ The call to master tractors, lathes, and other industrial means of production articulated during the First Five-Year Plan were echoed in regards to weapons during the war. Just as the First Five-Year Plan made industrial workers out of peasants, the army made soldiers out of yesterday’s civilians. The Red Army would use its political skills to stimulate soldiers to fight.⁴

In the previous chapter, we have seen how these soldiers avoided death. In this chapter we explore how they used the arsenal of the Red Army to become the agents of death. This chapter is divided into four sections. The first examines both the universal and specific problems that the Red Army faced in motivating its soldiers to pull the trigger and coordinating weapons systems, concluding with solutions to these problems and reflections on the experience of combat. The second offers a detailed inventory of the Red Army’s weapons and a discussion of how soldiers used them. The third explores the social worlds that these weapons fostered, and the last considers the dramatic improvements in both the arms and skills of soldiers.

Pulling the Trigger

Difficulties

Guards Colonel Momysh-uly reflected on the importance of the human factor in getting soldiers to pull the trigger, stating, “The self-preservation instinct forces you to kill another person, and this is much harder than to die yourself.” For him, what separated soldier from civilian was the ability to kill.⁵ Around the same time, S. L. A. Marshall, who interviewed combat soldiers in the US Army, found that the vast majority of soldiers claimed not to have been able to pull the trigger in combat, even when faced with life-threatening situations. Although Marshall’s findings have been challenged, and it appears likely that he overstated his case, they do fit with descriptions from the beginning of the war from the Red Army. Effective killing required training that would make the process of pulling the trigger mechanical and the inspiration of hatred that would overpower both fear and the taboo against killing. This is a process that requires considerable time and resources, both of which were in short supply.6

The summer of 1941 was an unmitigated disaster for the Red Army. The historian Anna Krylova dubbed the loss of tanks, planes, artillery, and automatic weapons the “demechanization” of the Red Army.⁷ Alongside this demechanization, the army went through a period of what I would call “deprofessionalization”: the regular (kadrovaia) army that began the war effectively ceased to exist. As a result, the war was waged overwhelmingly by new draftees and reservists, most of whom had little or no experience. These two processes fundamentally shaped the experience of service in the Red Army and contributed to the lopsided losses suffered by the Red Army early in the war.

To create the new army, accelerated guidelines were issued in 1941, providing only a month of training between induction and leaving for the front.⁸ Lack of professional cadres was something that the Bolsheviks had been dealing with since they came to power, and in many ways the experience of soldiers replayed those of newly minted factory workers during the First Five-Year Plan, as they learned on the job and worked much less efficiently than trained cadres.⁹ The training system devised in 1941 assumed that soldiers would be given time to acclimate and finish their preparation at the front, serving in special training units before being sent into combat. This did not always go according to plan. An order from March 16, 1942, complained that soldiers arrived inadequately trained and once at the front were often used as “faceless marching replacements” sent directly into combat instead of being integrated into units in the rear. This resulted in “a greater number of needless losses, making these reinforcements worthless.” The order called for the reduction in new units formed and a new system of rotating units off the line to receive and assimilate replacements before being bled white. In practice, however, soldiers continued to be sent into combat as “faceless marching replacements.”¹⁰

Soldiers often failed to master the basic skills necessary to survive. Reports from the first months of the war noted that soldiers “have not been trained to have the necessary faith in the power and potency of their arms.”¹¹ Even during the largely successful winter offensive of early 1942, Oleg Reutov lamented that a small, well-trained German force could hold back several times its numbers.¹² This situation did not improve as the winter turned to spring. In a report on failed spring 1942 operations, General Samsonov noted that the infantry was inactive, refusing to attack, allowing Soviet tanks to be destroyed and artillery to do most of the fighting. As a result, the technical branches suffered staggering losses. This was due to lack of communication and lack of training and discipline among infantrymen. As Samsonov noted: “A significant portion of the reinforcements did not know how to use their weapons, particularly grenades. It is impossible to say that the five days of training in the division’s rear was adequate. This is one of the reasons that the median number of bullets used by one active rifle in March was equal to 2.5 a day.” Lacking experienced commanders, there was no coordination and soldiers attacked “as a crowd, at full height, without firing, as small… noticeable groups, creating a convenient target for the enemy to open fire on.”13 These suicidal frontal assaults would become the cornerstone of the racist image of a mindlessly advancing horde popularized by Nazis and later largely accepted by Americans during the Cold War.¹⁴ These problems haunted the army through 1942, as a general at Stalingrad noted during the November counteroffensive that infantry often didn’t know how to shoot or run properly and “continue to hope that all tasks will be solved by the artillery.”¹⁵

Disorganization would also continue to be an issue, but never as severely as in 1941 and 1942, when Chekalov, an artillery officer, recorded in his diary: “We aren’t so much suffering from enemy fire as from our own disorganization.”¹⁶ Many soldiers and commanders were still civilians in uniform who had not mastered the basics of soldiering, let alone the more complicated coordination of weapon systems to accomplish their goals.

Lack of skill was compounded by a shortage of arms, machinery, and ammunition that would have been crippling even for well-trained troops. The Red Army lost not only millions of soldiers in 1941 and 1942 but also weapons. Of forty divisions being formed in October 1941, only ten had their full complement of weapons.¹⁷ Despite orders to send replacements to the front with a full complement of arms and equipment, many received weapons only at the front, and many units lacked automatic weapons.¹⁸

Even more dramatic were the losses in planes, tanks, and artillery.¹⁹ This meant that many specialists served in the infantry, despite valuable training.²⁰ Soviet tactics and strategy relied on coordinated infantry-tank assault with air and artillery support, not unlike the Blitzkrieg tactics of the Nazis. In the absence of these technical means of waging war, soldiers were unable to function in the ways demanded of them. Often the tanks, artillery, machine guns, and even rifles in the hands of skilled soldiers could not be used to full effect due to shortages of ammunition. One infantry commander noted in his diary in August 1941: “At war ammunition is a soldier’s life.”²¹ Artillerists and army commanders frequently complained about their inability to fulfill missions and advance due to a lack of shells.²²

The situation in the army was desperate in the first two years of the war, and indeed it seemed constantly on the verge of collapse. Yet as one veteran mused in an autobiographical novel: “From experience he had long ago come to know the simple truth: if you were to add up all the defects and shortages, it becomes clear that it is impossible to wage war in this situation. Though wage war they did.”23

Solutions

The Red Army was forced to deal with the universal issues of motivating men to fight in a specific situation of severe shortage. Intensive training, observation by superiors in combat, valorization of successful kills, hate propaganda, and shame are common strategies to get soldiers to pull the trigger.²⁴ The Red Army used all of these methods in ways that reflected Soviet culture. Red Army soldiers were subjected to a draconian disciplinary regime that employed threats of terror against them and their families. Soldiers were expected to turn their arms on those among their comrades who failed to fulfill their duties. Yet terror was no substitute for training.²⁵

Certain types of weapons and tactics lent themselves well to undertrained soldiers, while others forced the unwilling to take part in fighting. The sub-machine gun forced a soldier to be aggressive in its use and relied on relatively simple tactics. Weapons crews were more likely to fire due to the pressure exerted by the group and dissipation of culpability for killing among its members.²⁶ Finally, the Red Army reinstituted an ancient tactic—the volley. A volley is when all soldiers fire simultaneously. This made failure to fire conspicuous, slightly offset the lack of automatic weapons, and was seen as a way to stave off panic and give soldiers confidence in their weapons.²⁷ Observation by superiors and peers was also utilized as a way to pressure soldiers into doing their part. As Abdulin put it, “at war, to be ‘like everyone else’—that is, not worse than others—is sort of like confirming your own value as a person.”²⁸

Propaganda told soldiers of their individual responsibility to kill, the power of their arms, and the vulnerability and contemptibility of the enemy. Of this last, the Nazis provided ample material. Soviet propaganda focused on what Nazi victory would mean, Nazi occupation had wrought, and the personal responsibility of the soldier to stop the Nazis. These materials graphically depicted rape, murder, pillaging, and destruction committed by the Nazis, implying or explicitly stating that Red Army soldiers were complicit in these crimes by retreating and leaving these populations vulnerable.²⁹ The only way to redemption was through killing. As the very popular and evocative poem by Konstantin Simonov “If You Value Your Home (Kill Him!)” graphically described, “She, whom you were too bashful to kiss” would be “taken by force—in agony, in hate, in blood” by three Germans. The author stated clearly that it was each individual’s responsibility to kill:

If the German was killed by your brother,

If the German was killed by your neighbor,

It’s your brother and neighbor who are taking revenge

And you can find no justification

To hide behind another,

Another’s rifle cannot take revenge for you.

Simonov described the war as a zero-sum game that required killing: either the German’s wife would become a widow and his house burn, or yours would (he uses the intimate ty throughout the poem). The poem reaches a crescendo with a call to violence:

So kill at least one now.

So kill him faster!

As many times as you see him,

So many times kill him!30

The incantation of strong emotions reaching catharsis in the act of killing was a well-developed theme in wartime propaganda. In the short story “Tin-Tinych,” a mild-mannered schoolteacher becomes consumed by rage: “He bayonetted that vile creature with terrifying strength. For everything. For Private Danilov [a fallen comrade], for his students, for flowers, for the fishermen in Astrakhan, for the steelmakers in the Urals, for the teachers in Saratov, for Donbas miners, for all Soviet people, for life on his native soil, onto which crawled this loathsome fascist beast!”³¹ Killing reified membership in the Soviet community: an act of violence can be dedicated not only to fallen comrades but also to students and even flowers. As soldiers came to bear witness to the deaths of their comrades and see the real crimes that the Germans had committed, destroying the enemy became an obsession.³² Even practices that had been frowned on earlier as relics of the past, such as blood brotherhood and blood vengeance, were encouraged, embedding the call to kill Germans into ancient customs.³³

In the labor of mastering their weapons and learning to kill, soldiers bound themselves in the greater community of working people throughout the Soviet Union not only as avengers but also as skilled tradesmen. Tulegen Tokhtarov, a Kazakh miner who would later become a (posthumous) Hero of the Soviet Union, is reported to have declared: “A machine gun in battle is like a drill or a jackhammer in the mine. In the mines, extracting lead, I knew that it would be used against the enemy. Now I have been called on to directly guide this lead to its target. Without knowing my weapon perfectly, without becoming a master marksman, can I say that I value the labor of miners, the work that I did only yesterday?”34 Respect for others’ hard work was expressed through the adept use of weapons. Not only did fighting connect soldiers to those laboring on the home front, it was, in its own way, simply another form of work, in which enemy dead were the measure of production.

“I have killed a German, and you?” was a common propaganda trope in 1942.³⁵ The tremendous social pressure to kill was cemented by adapting shock work to wartime aims. Shock work made competition imperative as teams and individuals attempted to outdo each other in overfulfilling production quotas. At the front this was adapted to the schët, boevoi schët, or schët mesti, which could be translated as “body count/score,” “battle tally,” or “balance of vengeance.” The schët was a body count of the number of enemy soldiers and enemy machinery that a soldier, tank, or weapon crew had destroyed. The government adapted the shock-work tactic of material awards of several hundred rubles for the destruction of tanks. Artillery pieces displayed their schët in the form of a black tank with the number of destroyed tanks written in white on a cannon.³⁶ Units or individual soldiers could compete for a higher schët, and the opening of one’s schët was considered to be the moment when one became a real soldier. Soldiers were sometimes provided with space for their schët in propaganda materials.³⁷ Without a schët, which translated hatred of the enemy into productive action, one was not a complete person.³⁸

Red Army propaganda seldom used euphemism to discuss dying or killing, and the fixation on destroying the enemy could overtake goals such as gaining territory.³⁹ Momysh-uly wrote to his mistress in the war’s final spring that “the results of our actions are measured not by kilometers, but by the numbers we destroy… while I am in awe of those who force the enemy to flee, it is better still to dictate your will—to force him to fight, not to let him run but to destroy him, so that he can never wage war again.”⁴⁰ He enjoyed combat and had become a leading expert on soldiers’ psychology.

Combat: Thoughts in Battle

Soldiers in combat often struggled with fear, which could break a person or lead to heroism. According to Momysh-uly: “Overcoming the feeling of fear, a warrior feels himself at ease (relatively, of course) among a multitude of dangers, believes in the strength of his weapon, and rationally, cold-bloodedly, prudently acts on the battlefield. Sometimes blistering with the feeling of boiling hatred for the enemy which he has suffered, forgetting even self-preservation, he throws himself into danger and overcomes it.”41 Soldiers in combat were ideally supposed to be calm and collected with occasional explosions of righteous anger leading them to heroic feats. An iconic wartime song, “Holy War” (Sviashchennaia voina) had as its chorus “Let righteous rage boil over like a wave.”⁴² Other observers of their own sensations in combat described a variety of feelings from an intense lust for life under fire to a fatalism tempered by excitement or that they were simply too busy to feel fear.⁴³ Boris Marchenko wrote to his wife: “It has been my lot to live through quite a bit. But you somehow numb your nerves, ignore almost everything around you, lose your feeling of danger and fear.”⁴⁴ The heroism that soldiers were supposed to show could manifest itself as indifference or a cocktail of emotions.

FIGURE 5.2 The sniper Aleksandra Shliakhova, boasting of her schët, 1943. RGAKFD 0-286776 (V. P. Grebnev).

Tanker Lev Slëzkin described the mix of anxiety and pleasure he experienced while fighting in a letter home to his mother:

Sometimes I wonder what I am doing. People jump out from a foxhole in front of my machine and run, run, and I cold-bloodedly take aim as if it were training, cut them down with a machine gun, and when they fall I am happy. Or they set up a long antitank gun, a cannon—and you have one thought: faster, faster, and if the black smoke of an explosion takes its place—I am happy. My cause is just, noble, but regardless of the cause and how long I am doing this, I have become accustomed to it—this risky business, as opposed to the down time between battles, where time passes without purpose.45

This is a professional, someone who had been fighting for years, describing the joys and underlying truth of combat—the necessity to kill the enemy before he kills you. That a member of an intelligentsia family could speak so casually about violence to his mother far from the front attests to its centrality and acceptability. Soldiers described their time out of combat as times of boredom, while moments before battle or when they were under fire but unable to do anything could be terrifying.⁴⁶ Battle brought a certain clarity of purpose to seasoned soldiers. They were active, armed agents able to impact both their own fate and that of the country.

Nonetheless, under conditions of demechanization and deprofessionalization, tanks and planes could cause panic even in small numbers. Propaganda materials into 1944 noted that green troops reacted very strongly to planes, tanks, and artillery.⁴⁷ A special term, “tankophobia” (tankoboiazn’), was coined to denote the panic tanks elicited. Soldiers received special training to overcome this fear—a tank ran directly over their foxhole, after which they threw grenades at extremely close range.⁴⁸

An experienced soldier ultimately knew that these monstrous machines were operated by humans who could be killed and standing one’s ground was the only chance one had, even if it was grimly slim.⁴⁹ To advance or hold on to territory, soldiers needed to have confidence in themselves and their weapons. This is why a unit’s first kill, such as Abdulin’s at the beginning of this chapter, was treated with such fanfare: it proved that the enemy was vulnerable. Simply shooting could be good for morale: a veteran commander declared that “if a person doesn’t shoot, then he is already demoralized.”⁵⁰

Waging war had a strong psychological component intimately tied to the physical tools of the soldier.⁵¹ Overcoming fear and the taboo of killing was a process that every soldier had to pass through individually, and not everyone managed to pull the trigger. Some soldiers could pull the trigger on the war’s first day; others would prove unable to in May 1945. Battle required soldiers to overcome common psychological boundaries and extreme stress in order to use their weapons effectively and survive.

Frontline Learning

The battlefield was treated as a classroom. Soldiers and commanders were constantly reminded to expand their skills and knowledge at the front through reading, informal sharing of experiences, and seminars. Commanders were supposed to hold a meeting before a battle in which they inspected all weapons and equipment, demonstrating the power of Soviet arms. They then assembled their soldiers on the eve of an attack to “remind the soldiers of their oath, of the great liberating mission of the Red Army, show our dominance over the defensive enemy, give the fighters practical advice on how to conduct themselves in battle, remember the heroes of prior battles, call them to new feats and vengeance in the upcoming battle with the hated foe.”52 During battle, soldiers were encouraged to observe and learn. After combat, seminars were held to discuss what had worked and what had failed, praise heroic soldiers, and shame those who had failed to do their duty.⁵³ Survi vors who had made mistakes or shown cowardice were publicly humiliated, while the deaths of those who had shown fear or incompetence were used to teach the living.⁵⁴ These meetings helped offset the lack of training that soldiers received and created a greater sense of community based on killing and surviving. The worth of individuals to the collective was based on their effective use of arms.

Mastering weapons was everyone’s responsibility. Only via the skillful use of arms could the country be saved, and greater mastery would mean less loss of life. Stalin, in his May 1, 1942, address to the people of the Soviet Union, exhorted soldiers of all branches of service: “Study your weapon to perfection, become experts in your work, strike the German fascist invaders until their complete annihilation.”⁵⁵ Each weapon served a specific purpose and granted a soldier a particular status.

The Tools of the Trade

The Red Army’s arsenal consisted overwhelmingly of weapons that were effective, easy to use, and simple to maintain.⁵⁶ Soldiers were, as Anna Krylova noted, “partners in violence” with their weapons. Each weapon facilitated a specific type of killing, and different types of combat gave prominence to different weapons; urban environments gave primacy to grenades and compact arms, while open fields favored tanks and artillery.⁵⁷ In all environments the careful coordination of specialists wielding a variety of weapons was key to victory.

While constituting an integrated system, the major branches of service all played different roles and used different tactics on the battlefield. Soldiers in signals were tasked with the establishment and maintenance of communication, mostly through telephone but also via radio. Sappers sowed minefields and cleared enemy mines, built and destroyed roads, bridges, and concrete bunkers. Cavalry conducted reconnaissance and deep raids into enemy territory, made assaults in pursuit of a fleeing enemy, and was sometimes used to compensate for a lack of armor. Artillery was tasked with destroying enemy tanks and softening enemy positions to allow the infantry and armor to take territory and destroy the enemy. Tanks were used to assault enemy positions, both providing transport and a screen for the infantry. Last, the infantry was tasked with taking and holding territory and was the largest, most maneuverable branch of service.

FIGURE 5.3 Red Army Soldiers under fire in trenches, the North Caucasus, 1942. The soldier in the front carries a PPSh-41, the one farthest away a Maxim machine gun, the rest Mosin rifles. Their knapsacks, rolled overcoats, pots, and thing-bags are clearly visible. RGAKFD 0-156811 (M. V. Al’pert).

Soldiers’ weapons fell into two major categories, personal and crew-served, which encompassed very different ways of fighting and social organization. Personal weapons (rifles, submachine guns, and grenades) were used by soldiers in coordinated units but were ultimately operated by individuals. Crew-served weapons (machine guns, mortars, artillery, and tanks) could not be effectively operated by one person and required significantly more training and coordination to use. While all soldiers lived and killed collectively, crew-served weapons dictated a different set of relationships. Soldiers developed significant emotional attachments to both types of arms and defined their status and culture relative to their weapons.

Relationships with Weapons

The personal weapons a soldier carried came to feel like an extension of the body. As Loginov mused, “Our hands seem alien without a rifle, sub-machine gun, or grenade in our grasp.”58 These weapons were imbued with meaning by both the government and soldier from the moment a rifle or submachine gun was placed in a soldier’s hands or a crew received their tank or artillery piece. The issuing of weapons was accompanied by a ceremony including the Military Oath, and the weapon was the object that embodied this oath. While arms were mass-produced, they carried with them stories that made them more than simply assemblages of metal and wood. Soldiers often received “named weapons” with long histories that had been used by a soldier in the same unit, accompanied by solemn ceremonies. The script for one of these rituals from a propaganda pamphlet recounted how a wounded veteran gave his submachine gun to a new (“non-Russian”) arrival, reciting the names and deeds of previous owners—Paramonov, who killed 114, and Savushkin 121—and ending with the pledge: “I vow not to release this weapon from my hands until the complete victory over the enemy. If I am wounded, I will give this submachine gun, with the permission of my commander, to trusted hands that are capable of maintaining the honor of our Guards weapon.”⁵⁹ By 1944 a similar ritual had made its way into the regulations of armor formations. Every time a tank crew received a new machine or an old machine received a new crew, a parade was held in which the commander of the tank read aloud the serial number of the tank and names of crew members, followed by a celebratory march, sometimes in the presence of representatives of the factory that had built it.⁶⁰ Both rituals celebrate the spiritual weight of a weapon and the obligations it embodied. Other propaganda cited the serial number of the weapon either as a form of remembrance (e.g., “This rifle N. 1591-VB remains as a memory of Gazarov”) or a way of shaming irresponsible soldiers (e.g., “Rifle N. 61823,” a short story about a rusty, abandoned rifle).⁶¹

Soldiers’ fates were tied to their weapons bureaucratically as well as rhetorically. The serial number of whatever weapons were issued to a soldier were recorded in the Red Army booklet, and loss of a weapon was tantamount to treason. Soldiers could be executed for losing their weapons, but this was often unnecessary—without a weapon a soldier became a “defenseless target.”⁶² Even wounded soldiers kept their weapons and actively participated in combat until evacuated, and medics were under strict orders to carry both the soldier and his or her weapon from the battlefield.⁶³ Every day in the army was supposed to begin and end with an inspection. Special attention was paid to the condition of a soldier’s weapon, with punishments and public humiliation meted out to those with dirty, rusty, or malfunctioning arms.64 Every weapon had its own “caprices,” and veterans felt uncomfortable with a weapon they had yet to fire.⁶⁵

The successful prosecution of the war and the survival of the soldier hinged on soldiers coming to know and love their weapons. These prescribed bonds of affection found resonance among veterans. Weapons could serve as tokens of affection, exchanged with close friends.⁶⁶ Soldiers frequently spoke of their weapons as living beings. Some soldiers dedicated parts of their memoirs to their weapons, sometimes mourning them on the page.⁶⁷ Vasilii Grossman recorded that “a cannon after battle is like a living, wounded person. The rubber on its tires is torn apart, parts crumpled and shot through with shrapnel.”⁶⁸ Many soldiers discussed their weapons in interviews, diaries, or letters home. One soldier wrote in his diary that his submachine gun was “bored from idleness.”⁶⁹ Some soldiers wrote home about their arms, using terms of friendship or even romantic love. One soldier wrote home that he had met “a pretty special someone”⁷⁰ —his submachine gun, while another recorded a ditty: “A wife gets love and affection, And a rifle gets cleaned and oiled.”⁷¹

Soldiers could have close connections with any weapon from a pistol to a howitzer. Aleksandr Kosmodem’ianskii, a tanker, wrote home to his mother that although his crew had been scattered he was happy to receive “my own old fighting machine, tested in battle, all wounded and shot through, diligently patched together in field workshops. Not for nothing has she fallen cleanly into my hands, and now she won’t get away from me, she’s going to Berlin.”⁷² Despite being mass-produced and ubiquitous, these weapons felt very personal to those who wielded them. One artillerist described the odyssey of his howitzer to the Mints Commission immediately after the war:

My cannon is a 120mm howitzer, model 1938. We received her on September 3, 1941. My cannon took part in all of the battles for the duration of the division’s offensive. Until October 1942 I was a gunner, and then I commanded the gun. The crew changed after almost every action. I was wounded twice but didn’t go to the hospital. Only once for seven days was I in the hospital… True, the cannon caught it many a time, four or five times she was repaired at the armorer’s workshop, but they never had to do an overhaul… My cannon took 10,620 shots, traveled 4,413 or 4,613 kilometers.⁷³

This soldier could not separate his experience from that of his weapon, the cannon overtaking his biography and overshadowing his comrades. Such strong emotions probably stemmed from the fact that soldiers’ very lives, and the fate of the country, depended on their arms.

FIGURE 5.4 Portrait of decorated Sergeant I. N. Kokurin with his 76mm m.1942 ZIS-3 cannon, First Baltic Front, 1944. RGAKFD 0-82677 (I. Pikman).

Individual Weapons

All weapons needed to be used in coordinated efforts to be effective. The most basic building block of the army was the infantry squad of eight to twelve soldiers. Infantry tactics required coordinated fire as soldiers covered the advance of their comrades to destroy the enemy. The formations used by Red Army were open (six- to eight-step intervals between soldiers), and soldiers trained to quickly go from a “snake” (column used to advance, hiding numbers from the enemy) into a “chain” (a line of battle).74 The squad centered around the machine gun, with most soldiers carrying rifles.

RIFLES

Prior to the war a semiautomatic rifle, the SVT-40 (Samozariadnaia vintovka Tokareva obr. 1940 g.) was developed (the weapon with which Abdulin made his first kill) and nearly became the primary weapon of the Red Army.⁷⁵ However, soldiers complained that it was “inadequate for combat conditions due to the complexity of its construction, unreliability, and inaccuracy.”⁷⁶ This weapon probably proved a particular challenge to less mechanically inclined peasants and was unusually flimsy for a piece of Soviet equipment. The SVT-40 violated the simplicity of design that was the hallmark of Soviet arms and was eventually taken out of production.

In 1941 posters called men and women to arms in the defense of the Motherland. In most of these images, the weapon being shouldered is the Mosin-Nagant rifle M.1891/1930. Between 1941 and 1945 the Soviet Union produced roughly twelve million Mosin-Nagant rifles and carbines, which were carried by the vast majority of soldiers serving in the Red Army.⁷⁷ A bolt-action rifle 166 cm tall, weighing 4.5 kilograms unloaded with bayonet attached, with an effective range of 800 meters and a five-round magazine, the M.1891/1930 fired a 9.5 gram, 7.62mm caliber bullet at 865 meters per second.⁷⁸ A soldier was expected to take ten aimed shots a minute and carried between 100 and 170 rounds of ammunition.⁷⁹ This rifle was the updated version of the model 1891 rifle (the bayonet and site had been modified) and reflected what had become the world standard for infantry weapons during World War I. The Mosin-Nagant was effective against enemy soldiers, but those carrying them felt outgunned by the tanks, planes, and artillery that came to shape the battlefield.

Soviet propaganda praised the rifle: “our Russian rifle occupies the most honored place. It is as if she carried the glory of our Russian arms with her.”80 Soldiers were encouraged to think of themselves as part of a proud tradition, carrying a weapon that had been tested in battle over decades and in every condition. They were also taught to think of the rifle as a weapon that, in the hands of a skilled soldier, outclassed more modern arms.

No one proved how deadly the simple rifle could be more than snipers, who formed a “movement” during the war and were declared “Stakhanovites of the front.”⁸¹ Armed with a telescopic sight on a regular rifle, these soldiers developed the riflemen’s skills to an extreme degree, becoming masters of camouflage and expert marksmen. Stalin exhorted all riflemen to imitate the sniper.⁸² These men and women saw their enemy very clearly, silently stalking them, sometimes sitting motionless for hours at a time. Exemplary of the voluntarism and lack of professionalism in the Red Army, snipers often became specialists only at the front and at their own initiative or were “volunteered” by their political officers.⁸³ They received a special status, with significantly higher pay and a raise in ranks that recognized skill without giving them additional responsibilities.⁸⁴ With a tally numbering in the hundreds, successful snipers proved that with training and initiative, soldiers with the Mosin could become predators, “hunting” enemy officers and soldiers and able to kill better armed men.⁸⁵

Snipers were socially important: they demonstrated that anyone could become an effective killer by mastering the most ordinary weapon, regardless of nationality and gender. Poems such as Dem’ian Bednyi’s “Semёn Nomokonov” celebrated how native peoples of Siberia, hunters in civilian life, became excellent snipers. Bednyi praised the “wild Tungus” sniper Nomokonov, friend of the Russian people, who had a stick with over 320 tallies in his boot—one for each German he had killed. His skills were attributed to his childhood spent “in the harsh taiga” and his heritage.⁸⁶ Soldiers drawn from the ranks of prewar hunters utilized specialized skills from their civilian lives. Snipers were often expected to teach their skills to other soldiers, and the passing of skills from one sniper to another often involved interethnic friendship.⁸⁷ Sniping gave both “non-Russians” from some of the most remote regions of the Soviet Union and women a chance to prove themselves through killing.

Propaganda and the army used the sniper in a variety of ways. Flirtation with a female sniper often took the form of a challenge to beat her tally, adapting the general tenet that only those who distinguished themselves in battle were worthy of affection.⁸⁸ Snipers demonstrated the full potential of a soldier armed with the most basic weapon. The fact that many of them were both autodidacts and teachers who fostered several students made them all the more ideal. Through snipers, more than any other type of soldier, the tally found its realization and was utilized for socialist competitions to kill more enemy soldiers, just like workers at construction sites overful-filling norms during the Five-Year Plans.89 Snipers were capable of covering a retreat or destroying a decisive target in combat.⁹⁰ The sniper was fully conscious, as demonstrated by proficiency at killing.

THE BAYONET

Red Army tactics were very aggressive, and the ultimate symbol of aggression and fighting spirit was the bayonet.⁹¹ It was said that “the bullet clears the way for the bayonet” and that a rifle wouldn’t shoot straight without the bayonet attached.⁹² The use of the bayonet was closely connected to soldierly psychology, as soldiers were trained to maintain eye contact with an enemy they intended to bayonet. Any sign of weak will, even turning slightly, would lead to death.⁹³ The bayonet was seen as an integral part of the rifle, to be carried affixed to the rifle at all times. (Other armies provided a scabbard for bayonets.) Combat Regulations of the Infantry instructed soldiers “to close with the enemy, attack him, and destroy him in hand-to-hand combat or take him prisoner.”⁹⁴ Planes, tanks, and artillery all became much less useful when soldiers were engaged in melee. However, bayonets were inconvenient to carry, their form (a cruciform needle) made them useless as everyday tools, and many soldiers threw them away.⁹⁵ When the war correspondent Grigorii Pomerants was asked to wage an “ideological battle” with soldiers discarding their bayonets, he recalled that only once had his division used the bayonet. His comrades threw away bayonets as extra weight, as “riflemen are walking dead.” Soldiers in most branches of service had to carry all of their equipment on long marches, so items such as bayonets, helmets, and gasmasks—all of which cost the state money and all of which could save one’s life—were often discarded for comfort’s sake. This became such a problem that a new carbine was issued in 1944 with a swiveling bayonet that could not be removed. The inability to police soldiers’ behavior led to the redesign of the army’s primary weapon!⁹⁶

Regardless, the bayonet continued to have iconographic and mythological importance, even after soldiers discarded them. The central monument to victory on Moscow’s Poklonnaia Gora would take the form of a massive bayonet over 141.8 meters tall—ten centimeters for every day of the war. Bayonets also continued to be featured prominently in posters.

SUBMACHINE GUNS

On the opposite end of the spectrum from the bayonet were submachine guns, which encouraged aggression based on firepower rather than hand-to-hand combat and were immensely popular among soldiers.97 These were small, hand-held automatic weapons that used pistol ammunition (significantly shortening their range) with either a 71 round disc or a 35 round “horn.”⁹⁸ The Red Army, at the insistence of Marshal Voroshilov, was initially reluctant to adopt these weapons due to their short range. However, during the 1939 Winter War Finnish troops with submachine guns often proved highly effective at tying down larger Soviet formations and the Red Army soon began mass production.⁹⁹

The three major submachine guns used by the Red Army were the PPD-40, PPSh-41, and PPS-43. The PPSh-41 and PPS-43 were the most heavily employed and represented significant achievements in design. Using stamped rather than machined parts, they could be produced in massive numbers— over six million were made in 1941–1945. They were very easy to clean and maintain, with innovative chromed barrels. The PPS-43 was a specially adapted submachine gun for troops in confined spaces (tank crews, scouts, etc.) and adapted a German-style folding stock and even greater economy of production, being developed in blockaded Leningrad.¹⁰⁰

The army introduced a submachine gun company into every infantry battalion in October 1941.¹⁰¹ Submachine gunners were used as an initial force to scout and soften the enemy, take and hold important objects or launch counterattacks. They would advance in either a circular or “T” formation, leaving their own flanks open and attempting to break through enemy lines. They were also used to create the appearance of an attack to distract the enemy. These soldiers engaged at close range, 200–300 meters, and were considered indispensable for taking trenches.¹⁰² Submachine guns allowed troops with less training and underfed soldiers to level the playing field via technology. The PPSh-41 ultimately became the iconic weapon of the war, appearing on posters, monuments, and films.

GRENADES

Alongside submachine guns the key tools in urban and trench warfare were grenades, popularly called “pocket artillery.”¹⁰³ A wide variety of grenades— “defensive,” meaning that you couldn’t throw it farther than it exploded and needed some cover to use it; “offensive,” meaning it could be thrown farther than its blast radius; and antitank grenades—were found in soldiers’ pockets, pouches, and hanging off their belts.¹⁰⁴

Soldiers were supposed to carry between two and six grenades on their belts, although many carried several times that. During the Battle of Stalin-grad, grenades became the key weapon, according to many observers. Chuikov, commander of the Sixty-second Army, told the Mints Commission: “In these battles our soldiers came to love ‘Fenia’; that’s what they called the [F-1] grenade. In these street battles hand grenades, submachine guns, the bayonet, knife, and spade are employed. The Germans can’t take it.”105 Gre nades allowed one well-entrenched soldier to hold off a much stronger foe or to destroy an enemy tank.

“Burning bottles” (Molotov cocktails) were used alongside specially designed grenades to fight tanks.¹⁰⁶ The former came in two forms: one with an ampule, which ignited the liquid as the bottle broke against the target; the other filled with liquid “KS,” a napalm-like substance that reeked of rotten eggs and ignited on contact with the air. These were touted as excellent antitank weapons—burning liquid would seep into equipment and telescopes, igniting the engine, ordnance, and crew, while smoke would blind the enemy. However, these weapons were dangerous to use. They were so combustible that they had to be carried in special crates filled with earth.¹⁰⁷ “Burning bottles” exemplified the improvisational, barebones ethos of the army, where glass and fuel crudely combined were used to destroy precision machinery, all at great risk to the soldier using them.

Soldiers were encouraged to sacrifice themselves, trading their lives for the destruction of enemy soldiers and machinery. Trading a person for a tank was considered to be a life well spent. The story of the Red Army sailor Panikakha provides a vivid example. His burning bottle was struck by a bullet, turning him into a human torch. Rather than attempt to extinguish the flames, he ran at an enemy tank, setting it ablaze and killing the crew. This event was immortalized in a poem by Dem’ian Bednyi and later by a monument:

A burning torch, the avenging warrior…

He burned the enemy with his own fire!

They will write legends about him,

Our immortal Red Sailor!¹⁰⁸

Like much of wartime propaganda, this poem promised immortality in return for self-sacrifice and posited that the most powerful weapon in the Red Army was the superhuman will of the soldiers.

To reduce German advantages in planes, armor, artillery, and automatic weapons, soldiers were encouraged to get in close with grenades, submachine guns, and bayonets. An unsuccessful attack would leave the stranded and wounded at the mercy of the enemy, prompting many soldiers to carry a spare grenade for themselves in order to avoid the ignominy and torture of capture.109 Bullets, grenades, and shells were all essential; they could mark the difference between life and death. They were not, however, something a soldier would form an attachment with, nor an object that helped build a sense of community.

Crew-Served Weapons

The other end of the spectrum was occupied by crew-served weapons, everything from machine guns and mortars to artillery and tanks, which were objects built to last operated by collectives. Infantry soldiers dug their own, individual positions first and slept in bunkers that could be down the line from their fighting positions, weapons crews dug a multiperson fighting position with their weapon at the center and excavated their living space next to or even around it.

Crew members were in continuous contact, knew each other intimately, and functioned as a single entity. A crew could demonstratively distance newcomers, regardless of rank, in the ways that they ate together or slept.¹¹⁰ Crew members were inseparable and came to rely completely on each other in an exchange of competencies and favors, such as a less literate soldier asking for help writing home.¹¹¹ Those lacking a common language could come together around a machine, communicating through gestures and an unspoken understanding of their tasks.¹¹²

MACHINE GUNS

Machine guns were the nucleus of a squad and important secondary weapons for tanks. The Red Army used a variety of machine guns, but the two most prominent were the DP-28 (Ruchnoi pulemët Degtiarёva obr. 1928g.) and various iterations of the Model 1910 Maxim machine gun. The DP-28 was a handheld automatic rifle with a 47-round disc. One soldier could operate it; a second was assigned to carry ammunition.¹¹³ The Maxim, while old and heavy, held popular associations with the heroes of the Civil War, particularly Chapaev. The crew of a Maxim was at least two and as many as five soldiers.

The machine gun was a key tool that fulfilled a number of tactical roles, not only killing but also limiting the movement of enemy soldiers by pinning them down. Machine gunners, like snipers, were specialists with higher rank and compensation than regular soldiers.¹¹⁴ With these privileges came extra work and responsibilities. Each machine gun required its own fire card and reserve positions because they were a primary target of the enemy. At night the vulnerable flanks of a unit were covered by its machine guns.115 The Combat Regulations of the Infantry stated: “A well-functioning machine gun is unassailable for enemy infantry. Therefore machine gunners fight to the end, under any conditions, even in encirclement, sacrificing themselves.”¹¹⁶ They also played an important psychological role, as one commander recalled: “when a machine gun rattled, everyone’s mood was elevated.”¹¹⁷ The machine gun made numbers less significant than nerve and skillful use of terrain.

ARTILLERY AND MORTARS

Equally key to the successful prosecution of modern warfare were artillery and mortars. Red Army defensive tactics called for luring the enemy as close as possible and striking a crushing blow at point-blank range. In offensive operations, artillery provided a shield of fire for infantry to advance behind, suppressing the enemy and destroying vital targets such as tanks, machine guns, and enemy artillery. All of this required coordination by a team of soldiers who aimed, loaded, and serviced the weapon.

Artillery was both an antipersonnel and an antimachinery weapon. Standard artillery calibers ranged from the 25mm anti-aircraft shells to the most common 45mm gun assigned to infantry regiments to massive howitzers firing shells of over 305mm.¹¹⁸ Artillery shells included both armor-piercing shells and high-explosive shrapnel that could render the human form unrecognizable. Artillerists needed to make advanced algebraic calculations, exploiting the landscape to fire accurately, as the number of shots they could make from one position before the enemy zeroed in on them was limited. The smallest artillery piece, the 50mm mortar, had only a two-man crew that lived like infantrymen, while most artillery was serviced by five or more soldiers. The crew of a larger mortar (82mm or 120mm) or cannon was commanded by a sergeant who was responsible for the actions of all crew members, with a gunner who aimed the piece, a loader, and at least one ammunition carrier. In addition, every unit was supposed to have several soldiers available to replace losses.¹¹⁹

Specialized tank-destroying artillery units engaged enemy tanks in a deadly game of peek-a-boo, allowing enemy tanks to get as close as possible in order to destroy them. Soldiers serving in antitank artillery formations received a number of privileges, including a special patch on their sleeves.¹²⁰ Their tactics required strong nerves. The artillery was largely immobile on the battlefield, at most having a few reserve positions to maneuver among. Artillerists were forbidden from retreating without their arms. One artillerist explained: “We take heavy casualties. The Germans call us ‘dead men’ [smertniki]. We can’t leave the battlefield. Of course, no one can leave, but people run away. It’s easier for an infantryman. We can’t leave in any event, so they send us to the more dangerous places.”121 This image of artillerists holding their ground against enemy tanks, defending to the last man, emerged during the war and became a major trope in postwar popular culture. Artillery was generally horse-drawn, but increasingly as the war continued became motorized either with trucks or as self-propelled guns (samokhodki)—artillery pieces mounted on a tank chassis.¹²²

TANKS

Soviet tankers were reminded that their steel behemoths were originally devised as a solution to the problem of the machine gun during World War I. Tanks could destroy strong enemy positions and provide a screen against small arms fire for infantry. By World War II, tanks had developed into rapid-moving, heavily armored machines. Tanks fundamentally changed the battlefield in World War II, deepening the space of the front and allowing for rapid movement that would have been physically impossible in the previous war. The successful use of tanks required trained personnel to crew them and precise coordination to prevent their isolation and destruction by anti-tank weapons and enemy tanks.¹²³

Tanks were divided into light, heavy, and medium and were crewed by two to five soldiers. The Red Army used three chassis for all of its armored vehicles, greatly simplifying manufacture, maintenance, and repair. We will concentrate on the most iconic tank of the war, the T-34, which is often described as the best tank of the war due to the economy of its manufacture and combat effectiveness.¹²⁴ A medium tank, the T-34 weighed 28.5 tons, could travel up to 50 km per hour, carried over 700 liters of diesel fuel, a crow bar, a saw, an ax, and two spades. The tank also carried a radio, fire extinguisher, and medical kit. Armed with a 76mm cannon, 71 shells, three DP machineguns with 1,890 rounds of ammunition, 20 F-1 grenades, and the soldiers’ own personal weapons, the tank was a veritable mobile fortress.¹²⁵

A tank crew consisted of a commander, turret gunner, loader (komandir orudiia, bashner, zariazhaiushchii), mechanic/driver, radio operator, and (depending on model) assistant gunners and mechanics. The commander was responsible for controlling the tank and keeping it provisioned and functional, with specific tasks assigned to each member of the crew: the turret gunner kept track of shells, loaded, aimed, and fired the cannon; the radio operator kept the radio in order, communicated with other tanks, and operated a machine gun; and the mechanic/driver drove the tank and maintained the engine, air filter, and tracks.126 Keeping these machines running was a full-time job, and it has been estimated that about a quarter of tank losses were due to mechanical failure.¹²⁷ To operate this behemoth, the crew had to function like an organism, each soldier answering for one part of the system. Using a tank was difficult business. Closed hatches in combat meant that visibility was extremely limited. Gunners often had to aim while moving rapidly over uneven terrain, solving trigonometric equations under fire. They were encouraged to use machine-gun fire or several shots to zero in on their targets, with the mechanic/driver observing where the shot or shell landed (much the way a sniper team worked).¹²⁸ The mechanic/driver had to constantly keep in mind the type of ground they drove on, because swamps could swallow tanks and muddy ground immobilize them.¹²⁹ Tanks could become giant battering rams, whether to ram through buildings or crush enemy weapons and soldiers.¹³⁰ Tank crews needed to keep in constant communication with other tanks and surrounding units, using radio, flares, flags, and hand signals.¹³¹

FIGURE 5.5 T-34. Cover of Tank T-34 v boiu.

Successfully using a tank required the ability to read maps and terrain, make judgments about soil consistency, and coordinate efforts with engineers when crossing swamps, rivers, or lakes.¹³² Tanks required a lot of prior planning and information about the enemy to work effectively, and tankers used not only fire maps but also tank maps that recorded information about the landscape, enemy, and points where the tanks were to regroup.¹³³ Tankers frequently had to leave the confines of their tank in order to reconnoiter—climbing trees, crawling forward, and gathering as much information as possible before returning to the confines of the tank, where only a few periscopes and slits allowed the crew to see the outside. Vision was so limited that every crew member was responsible for constant observation of a certain portion of the 360 degrees around the tank.134 When used together, a platoon of tanks functioned exactly like an infantry squad of steel giants, maintaining distance to ensure maneuverability, covering each other, and deploying from columns into battle formations. The turret even moved back and forth while on the march like a giant head.¹³⁵ Tanks also provided transportation for soldiers, being exactly the right size to take a squad—they even had special handles for riders.¹³⁶ These soldiers provided cover and maneuverability but also required crews to move carefully so as not to crush them and to provide support when these soldiers got pinned down.¹³⁷ As soon as the tank stopped anywhere, the crew took stock, replenished supplies, made repairs, and then began a series of new tasks, including the gathering of information, digging a position for sleeping underneath the tank, and setting up a forward position to guard the tank. A tanker’s work was never done.

During offensives, tanks destroyed enemy machine guns and artillery, then concentrated on killing soldiers. They were to avoid combat with enemy tanks unless they had a clear advantage.¹³⁸ On the defensive, tanks could be used as entrenched artillery, a reserve for counterattacks, or a distraction to confuse the enemy.¹³⁹ Tanks used without proper reconnaissance were quickly destroyed.¹⁴⁰ As late as the autumn of 1942, it was found that many crews had yet to master these skills and armored unit commanders often just controlled their own tanks rather than commanding their formations.¹⁴¹ Measures were soon taken to improve cadres and reorganize the armored forces.¹⁴²

The fact that tanks were so expensive and difficult to operate and required reliable, talented crews led to extreme vetting of armor cadres. In October 1942 a special order to fill the ranks of tank training schools declared that prospective tankers had to have distinguished themselves in battle and have at least seven grades of education, with exceptions to the latter condition made only for those who had attained the rank of sergeant and won combat medals. A special commission screened all candidates. A few months later a directive insured that tankers were used only as specialists, and not sent as replacements to other branches of service.¹⁴³ A November 1944 order repeated these requirements, adding that from previously occupied territories only Communists and Komsomol members could be considered to serve as tankers. Soldiers from Western Ukraine, Western Byelorussia, and Moldova—all annexed on the eve of the war—were ineligible.144

Tank crews had to be educated enough to master a complicated piece of machinery and dedicated enough to be trusted to function autonomously. An infantry or artillery soldier could be forced to fulfill his duty under the watchful eye of commanders, but a tank crew was often alone and on enemy territory, where the will and ingenuity of its members alone could keep a precious piece of equipment from falling into enemy hands.¹⁴⁵ There was also no way to evacuate wounded soldiers from a tank, and the 1944 Combat Regulations for Armored and Mechanized Troops stated, “Every soldier in the crew, if wounded, should exert all of their strength and continue fighting.”¹⁴⁶ Tanks were a key weapon of the Red Army in a war that Stalin referred to as a “war of motors,”¹⁴⁷ and the men who crewed them had not only to be dedicated to the cause to the point of being ready to burn alive for it, but also capable of turning a monstrous steel ensemble into a smoothly functioning entity. No weapon better demonstrated the Red Army adage “machinery without people is dead.”¹⁴⁸ The connection of soldier with machine could become so great that in one extreme case a soldier used the blood of a fallen comrade to put out a fire in his tank.¹⁴⁹ Tankers without their tanks were particularly pitiable, as one veteran described: “without their tanks, without boots, barefoot, in torn clothing they have a tortured look—filthy, bloody, and burnt.”¹⁵⁰ But burning was part of being a tanker.

Corporate Cultures of Different Arms

Soldiers were encouraged to identify with their weapon and branch of service. There were widely accepted nicknames for the various branches, often reproduced in propaganda: “They call the infantry ‘the Queen of the Fields,’ artillery—‘God of War,’ sappers—‘War’s Workers,’ and the signal corps— ‘War’s Nerves.’”¹⁵¹ All of these branches relied on each other to successfully fight, but antagonism was rife as soldiers created more or less exclusive corporate communities. Ivan Iakushin, a cavalryman, recalled an old saying from the tsarist era that could still be heard in the Red Army: “A dandy serves in the cavalry, an idler in the artillery, a drunkard in the navy, an idiot in the infantry.”¹⁵² We will look closely here at three branches of service that formed distinct communities and exemplified modern warfare: the infantry, artillery, and armor (tanks).

The infantry were at once the biggest and most maligned branch of service. Virtually all soldiers underwent some basic infantry training regardless of their specialization, because the digging, movement, and use of arms emphasized in the infantry were necessary for everyone. As the only branch of service that could independently take and hold territory, the infantry was the largest and in many ways the most important branch. Despite this, and because it tended to get the least-educated soldiers, many looked down on infantrymen. Momysh-uly proclaimed the infantry to be the “fundamental and universal branch of service”:

No other branch of service requires such toughness and bravery, almost inhuman effort, exertion, as from the infantryman… Everything he conquers he takes with his own hands, himself, personally, not thanks to “steeds” or “motor.” No one is as deprived of excuses and opportunities to avoid battle, citing a broken machine or lack of preparation… In no one else does the natural beauty and that natural ugliness of a person show itself so clearly… are man and beast so harmonized, as in the infantryman.153

Momysh-uly positions the most humble soldiers as not only those most necessary to get things done but also as the most authentic humans. The infantry suffered the heaviest losses and had the largest circulation of cadres, which meant that cohesion and the establishment of a community was a particularly difficult problem in its ranks. As Lev Kopelev noted: “People there were more mixed, losses [were] heavier, and the soldiers and commanders changed more often, without having time to firm up a real, rooted comradeship.”¹⁵⁴

FIGURE 5.6 Merging of man and machine. Tanker Senior Sergeant E. P. Fёdorov eats in his tank, 1942. RGAKFD 0-57505.

In sharp contrast to the infantry stood the artillery, where Kopelev noted that young officers called each other nicknames, “played chess and battleship, argued about films, soccer, Maiakovskii, love… And at the same time skillfully and heatedly directed artillery fire.”¹⁵⁵ The artillery was a highly technical branch, requiring mathematical and mechanical skills that were less crucial to the infantry. Also, in the period of deprofessionalization and demechanization artillery was often the most effective branch, as tanks were too few and infantry undertrained. This led to a sense of superiority among many artillerists that reversed Momysh-uly’s lionization of the “Queen of the Fields.” Artillery Commander Ivan Bykov told the Mints Commission during the battle of Stalingrad that he would never leave the artillery and contrasted the habits of infantrymen with those of artillerists: “Artillery is a more organized, compact branch of service, and so are its members. You see, we and the infantry get reinforcements at the same time. It seems as if these reinforcements are the same, but they are a different breed… Everywhere you see the difference, from their abilities in battle to the way they act… Artillery is more culturally developed, its fighting abilities and all other qualities.” He saw this as stemming from both training and the material culture of the two branches. He explained that in the infantry: “A person feels less accountability for their actions, and he works on himself less. An artillerist has a rifle, saber, horse, saddle, accoutrements, and so on, and an infantryman just has a rifle and a backpack, maybe a spade and that’s it. And he even does a poor job taking care of his rifle.”156 Something similar to class consciousness overtook soldiers, with those from the more technical branches speaking of the infantry in terms that the middle and upper classes often reserved for the poor.¹⁵⁷ The infantrymen were blamed for a poor education and a lack of responsibility tied to the poverty of their material culture, regarded as a mass organization with a lower “cultural level.” Artillerists in particular were encouraged to think of themselves as a cut above the rest, as artillery was the “God of War.”

Artillerists held a special place in Soviet tactics, being the primary antitank force, particularly in the war’s first years. Stalin had a special affection for the artillery, and they alone among ground forces received their own holiday during the war: Artillerists’ Day, first celebrated on November 19, 1944.¹⁵⁸ An article from 1944 celebrated Stalin’s genius, care for the army, and special relationship to the artillery: “Despite the huge importance of tanks and aviation, Comrade Stalin did not exaggerate their role. The Germans wagered on tanks and planes, underestimating artillery, and have been paying dearly for this. Comrade Stalin called artillery ‘the God of War,’ and his valuation has been entirely supported by a whole range of events. He devised the doctrine of modern artillery and artillery offensive.”¹⁵⁹ The artillery was both being rewarded for the key role it had played in the war and used to gloss over the disastrous first years of the war. Rather than admit that the importance of artillery was in part the result of shortages, the lack of tanks and planes early in the war was presented as part of the wise strategy of the Generalissimo. This was a fitting choice, given that artillerists were likely to be among the few in a division that had long memories, as enough of them usually survived to become part of the kostiak, or “backbone,” around which units were rebuilt.¹⁶⁰

Somewhere between the infantry and artillery rode tankers. The elite status of tankers meant that every member of the crew was supposed to be at least a sergeant, and the commander of a medium or heavy tank was either a lieutenant or a senior lieutenant.¹⁶¹ The rank of a tank commander was the equivalent of that of a commander who could lead dozens of soldiers in the infantry. Yet tanks were surprisingly vulnerable. To be on a tank crew meant to burn, literally. Tanks suffered massive casualties, and escaping from a burning tank was part of the job. One veteran casually wrote his mother that two of his tanks had burned, while another told the Mints Commission of a comrade who had escaped from twelve tanks before being killed outside his thirteenth.162 Early in the war, it was determined that tanks should be sent to existing units rather than be used to form new units, as a unit would lose 70–80 percent of its tanks in two weeks of combat.¹⁶³ Germans investigating destroyed tanks that they captured found that the vast majority were hit within six months of manufacture.¹⁶⁴

These facts ran counter to an official image of tanks as virtually indestructible. The hit “Tanker’s March,” made popular by the film Traktoristy (dir. Ivan Pyr’ev, Mosfilm, 1939) on the eve of the war, spoke only of the remarkable qualities of tanks, not their vulnerability. It boasted: “Our armor is strong and our tanks fast/And our people filled with bravery/Roaring with fire, shining with the sparkle of steel/The machines go into a furious campaign.” The song continued to promise any enemy waiting in ambush that Soviet tankers would fire first and destroy them.¹⁶⁵ Much of the folklore produced by tankers themselves focused on their feelings of vulnerability and spoke to a sense of fatalism that belied official culture, reflecting what they witnessed inside their tanks. The T-34 was often referred to as “a coffin for four brothers.”¹⁶⁶ A popular frontline song with many variations spoke of a proud fatalism:

Motors flare with flame

licking the turret with fiery tongues

I accept the call of fate

with a handshake…

They take us out from the debris

Carry the carcass out

And volleys from the turret’s cannon

Escort us on our last voyage…

Farewell Marusia, my darling,

And you, KV [tank], my little brother,

You I will see no more,

I lie with a shattered skull.¹⁶⁷

Tanks were fearsome machines cared for by their users but often became final resting places. The extreme responsibility that tankers had for their machines, which tended to have short lives in combat, led to a great deal of identification with them. Many had a long list of comrades whose deaths soldiers witnessed in the tight confines of their tanks.

Each tank was individually identified. Tanks themselves often had a name and a story even before arriving in a unit. It was not uncommon for a collective farm, factory, region, or even notable individual to donate money to pay for a tank or column of tanks during the war, often honored by the name of the tank or unit (e.g., Kirovets from the famous Kirov Factory in Leningrad or Battle Girlfriend—a tank paid for by a war widow who later became its driver/mechanic).168 Many were also given the name of a historical personage such as Chapaev or Suvorov. Naming tanks gave them an affective connection with the rear or reified Russian heroic past. Even unnamed tanks were given a number by the unit commander that was displayed on all sides to make tanks identifiable. Soldiers painted their tanks camouflage colors to break up their outline in the summer and whitewashed tanks in the winter. The potential for personalization was quite high, and soldiers loved their machines, even if they were frequently knocked out of commission and repaired.¹⁶⁹

Tankers, artillerists, and infantrymen lived very differently. Who you were in the army was determined by what weapon you used and how well you used it. The way that your time would be organized, the activities that you engaged in, how well you were compensated, and a great deal of social capital were an extension of the weapon you wielded. As the war continued and soldiers became more and more competent, these differences continued even as the branches began interacting with each other more and more intimately.

The Emergence of a Professional Army

The experience of veterans, purchased at a steep cost in human lives, was immensely valuable. Just as cadres of workers learned on the job during industrialization, so did soldiers at the front. As the crises of 1941–1942 passed, units were increasingly composed of soldiers who had survived their initial trial by fire and of soldiers who had been given time to more adequately train before being sent into combat. Soviet industry was able to produce arms and armaments on a massive scale, providing soldiers with more of what they needed to kill. The Nazis had also provided ample reasons for most soldiers to pull the trigger. As men and women bore witness to destroyed villages and murdered civilians and POWs, the propaganda proscription to allow “noble anger” to overtake oneself and take vengeance became a reality. By 1943 an officer could tell Vasilii Grossman: “The infantry has become accustomed to shooting. Automation has developed.”¹⁷⁰ Beyond simply pulling the trigger, soldiers were increasingly showing mastery of their weapons, as the rising number of Guards units demonstrated. By February 1943 over sixty divisions, corps, and other large units had earned Guards status.¹⁷¹

By early 1943 General Chuikov could boast that “Stalingrad is the glory of the Russian infantry. The infantry defeated the entire arsenal of German technology.”172 He presented the clear turning point of the war as the triumph of the most basic, motley, and overwhelmingly peasant branch of the army over the meticulously designed machinery of the Wehrmacht. On Red Army Day (February 23) 1943, Stalin declared that the Red Army had become “a professional [kadrovaia] army.”¹⁷³ The proportion of automatic weapons in the army rose dramatically. Technical formations came to make up a larger portion of the army as armor and artillery were privileged for replacements, often leading to chronically understrength infantry formations. Now expertise and firepower increasingly replaced manpower.¹⁷⁴ The rising competence of both soldiers and commanders led to lighter casualties.¹⁷⁵ The success at Stalingrad provided new tactics and showcased the efficacy of specialized troops such as snipers and submachine gunners. As the army turned westward, it was both remechanized and reprofessionalized. Aggressive tactics that had often been suicidal in 1941–1942 became effective.

Coordination between the branches of service during operations improved dramatically.¹⁷⁶ Beginning in Stalingrad and expanding thereafter, new storm units (shturmovye otriady, shturmovye gruppy) played an increasingly important role in combat.¹⁷⁷ Mixed groups of the various arms brought together for a specific task, such as storming part of a city or capturing a hill, provided greater coordination. The storm units were the polar opposite of the poorly trained and barely coordinated formations of the first phase of the war. These groups relied on a small number of highly professional cadres to succeed.¹⁷⁸ This could affect a soldier’s understanding of his or her place in the army and foster greater intimacy between soldiers and their commanders. Hero of the Soviet Union General Pëtr Koshevoi described the difference in how units functioned in one of the last operations of the war to the Mints Commission: “every soldier knew who you were… We broke the whole existing organization down. We built a new one, prepared specifically for the mission, which was assigned to the troops. Got all people—sappers, artillerists, signals, staffers, tankers, self-propelled gunners—together, in one unit, so that everyone knew everyone else.”¹⁷⁹ These new tactics placed greater importance on the individual soldier, as commanders demanded not only more of him or her but also took seriously the rhetoric of a commander being intimate with their subordinates and provided a stable group of well-supplied professionals.

Soldiers had greater access to ammunition and fuel. General Antipenko, head provisioning officer for the First Byelorussian Front, stated that if you took the Battle of Stalingrad as a base level, then by the summer of 1943 the amount of ammunition used daily had increased more than threefold and fuel quadrupled, while by the Battle of Berlin ammunition was being expended at nearly five times the rate of 1942 and fuel over five times.180 Increasing numbers of Guards units meant that a significant number of infantry formations would have a chance to build camaraderie, because their wounded returned to the same unit.¹⁸¹ In addition to greater infrastructure and organization, soldiers seemed more willing to kill.

Many observed that soldiers had become fixated on killing and the tools of the trade. One sniper confided to Vasilii Grossman, “I have become a brutal [zverskii] person—I kill, I hate them, as if that is how my life should be.”¹⁸² A. Luzhbin recorded that one of his soldiers told him, “I have already forgotten how to boil kasha, but I know mines very well.”¹⁸³ During Stalingrad the desire to kill seems to have reached the level of obsession, as Ivan Vasil’ev, head of the Political Department of the Sixty-second Army at Stalingrad, revealed: “I should say that I didn’t see or hear or get any intelligence about Red Army men under any battle conditions showing any sort of pity for the Germans. What is more, even if there wasn’t anyone to stick with a bayonet, they would stab the dead.”¹⁸⁴ Shortly after the war Boris Slutskii described hatred toward the enemy as “not contempt, not spite, but a disgusted hatred, an attitude on the level of regard for frogs and salamanders.”¹⁸⁵ For some in the army, hatred went from passion to a sort of disgusted ennui once Red Army soldiers attained overwhelming superiority in tanks, planes, and artillery.

Becoming a professional soldier could overshadow all other identities, as Loginov recalled: “Sometimes it seems as if we’ve always been soldiers, as if we never had a family or childhood.”¹⁸⁶ Millions of people had been taught to kill and plied this trade for years. Soldiers came to terms with the killing they had done without any government program to reintegrate them into society. Having weapons training and seeing the results of their use was the norm for a huge swath of the population by 1945. After the war, some veterans spent as much of their free time as possible with their comrades, while others avoided other veterans and talk of the war.¹⁸⁷ Some described feeling uncomfortable without a weapon, and firearms were ubiquitous in the chaotic years after the war.¹⁸⁸

Weapons themselves acquired a new status after the war, as the AK-47 and nuclear warheads supplanted wartime arms and the rifles, machine guns, cannons, and tanks used during the war began to take their places in museums. Often tanks and artillery pieces that had played a part in the liberation of a city became monuments. There was little room for the discussion of the gritty details of what these weapons had done or the difficult process of learning to use them. Instead, what soldiers and their arms had accomplished together, the defeat of Fascism, was emphasized. They had learned a new trade, one that was particularly grim and risky, but which they had mastered. As nomadic soldiers waged an unprecedented war of attrition, they and their government strove to make sense of their wanderings and anchor soldiers in a larger community.