Destruction battalions
Encyclopedia
Destruction battalions, colloquially destroyers or strybki was a paramilitary
organisation in the western Soviet Union
, which fulfilled tasks of internal security
in the Eastern Front (World War II)
and after it.
the Soviet Union on 22 June 1941, a state of war was declared in the western regions of the country and in the occupied and illegally annexed Baltic states
. Vladimir Tributs the Commander-in-Chief of the Baltic Fleet
of the Soviet Union issued an order on 24 June 1941 warning on the paralysing actions of enemy paratrooper
squads aided by the "capitalist-kulak
" portions of the populations, which allegedly had a large number of weapons that had not been turned in. The officers ordered the strengthening of defences of headquarters, army units and communications. Attacking "bandits" were to be shot on the spot. The struggle against saboteur
s was the competence of the border guard units subordinate to the NKVD
(People's Commissariat of Internal Affairs of the Soviet Union).
during Operation Barbarossa
, with the mission to secure the Red Army rear, assure the operation of strategically important enterprises and to destroy the valuable property that could not be evacuated. The units received authority to summarily execute
any suspicious person. Basically the tasks accounted for the implementation of a scorched earth policy.
and kolkhoz
managers. There were no other requirements, so the ranks were socially varied, including a significant proportion of felons. The battalions were commanded by head managers of the regional
committee level. The Chief-of-Staff of Moscow was Dmitrii Kramarchuk.
During July 1941, a total of 1,755 destruction battalions were created, across all territories near the frontline, comprising about 328,000 personnel.
During July–August 1941 in the Belorussian SSR, chiefly in Vitebsk
, Homel, Polesia
, Mohylew oblasts, 78 such battalions were created, comprising more than 13,000 personnel. Part of these were later transformed into Belarusian partisans
.
The battalions were also formed in the newly annexed territories of Karelo-Finland, Estonia
, Latvia
, Lithuania
, East Poland, Galicia, and Bessarabia
. Immediately after the beginning of Operation Barbarossa, combat squads were formed. Following the orders of the NKVD
, night watch squads were created in areas with large concentrations of the forest brothers
. As firearm
s were not provided the nightwatchmen
equipped themselves with sticks. On June 25, 1941 the first squads received fire arms from the reserves of the former paramilitary
organisations and through self-armament.
and the implementation of the scorched earth tactics were accompanied by terror
against the civilian population, which was treated as supporters or shelterers of forest brothers. The destruction battalions burnt down farms and some small boroughs. In turn, the members of the extermination battalions were at risk of repressions by the anti-Soviet partisans.
. Mauricius Parts, son of the Estonian War of Independence veteran Karl Parts
, was doused in acid. In August 1941, all residents of the village of Viru-Kabala were killed including a two-year old child and a six-day old infant. A partisan war broke out in response to the atrocities of the destruction battalions, with tens of thousands of men forming the Forest Brothers
to protect the local population from these battalions. Occasionally, the battalions burned people alive. The destruction battalions murdered 1,850 people in Estonia. Almost all of them were partisans or unarmed civilians.
Another example of the destruction battalions' actions is the Kautla massacre
, where twenty civilians were murdered and tens of farms destroyed. Many of the people were killed after torture
. The low toll of human deaths in comparison with the number of burned farms is due to the Erna long-range reconnaissance group breaking the Red Army blockade on the area, allowing many civilians to escape.
The primary task of the destruction battalions was the fight against the armed resistance movement. This included terrorising the actual or potential supporters of forest brothers among the civilian population, participation in active combat, organisation of ambush and secret guard posts, reconnaissance
and search patrols. The passive operations included guard and watch-keeping duties, convoy of detainees and arrested individuals as well as guarding cargo.
The destroyers guarded systematically institutions of power and economic objects in the rural areas. In a post-war situation where the factual state power in a rural municipality lay with the Soviet police, the Militsiya
, the destroyers constituted a force, which guaranteed the implementation of the Soviet policies. A typical task was to force the farmers to fulfil public forestry, peat extraction and road construction obligations. No measures of coercion policy were implemented in the rural communities, which were not carried out or supervised by armed destroyers. They also fought against crime, both independently and as an additional force to the Militsiya.
The destruction battalions were great in size while they never became the efficient and active armed force which it was expected to come and which was meant to rapidly eradicate the forest brothers. Despite the primarily passive role of the destroyers in the fight against the resistance movement, they provided invaluable assistance to the active participants in this fight, state security institutions and internal troops. As local people the destroyers spoke the language, knew the people, landscape and circumstances, which was inadequate among the NKVD and internal troops. The destruction battalions were also very useful as an auxiliary force. The organisation was eventually dismissed in 1954.
' organisation, which assisted the implementation of the criminal policy of the Soviet regime, and was thus a criminal organisation. It has been identified as such by the Riigikogu
the Parliament of Estonia
. At the same time, the destroyers cannot be accused of crimes against humanity in corpore, because of the legal principles of the individual character of guilt
and responsibility.
Paramilitary
A paramilitary is a force whose function and organization are similar to those of a professional military, but which is not considered part of a state's formal armed forces....
organisation in the western Soviet Union
Soviet Union
The Soviet Union , officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics , was a constitutionally socialist state that existed in Eurasia between 1922 and 1991....
, which fulfilled tasks of internal security
Internal security
Internal security, or IS, is the act of keeping peace within the borders of a sovereign state or other self-governing territories. generally by upholding the national law and defending against internal security threats...
in the Eastern Front (World War II)
Eastern Front (World War II)
The Eastern Front of World War II was a theatre of World War II between the European Axis powers and co-belligerent Finland against the Soviet Union, Poland, and some other Allies which encompassed Northern, Southern and Eastern Europe from 22 June 1941 to 9 May 1945...
and after it.
Background
As Germany attackedOperation Barbarossa
Operation Barbarossa was the code name for Germany's invasion of the Soviet Union during World War II that began on 22 June 1941. Over 4.5 million troops of the Axis powers invaded the USSR along a front., the largest invasion in the history of warfare...
the Soviet Union on 22 June 1941, a state of war was declared in the western regions of the country and in the occupied and illegally annexed Baltic states
Baltic states
The term Baltic states refers to the Baltic territories which gained independence from the Russian Empire in the wake of World War I: primarily the contiguous trio of Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania ; Finland also fell within the scope of the term after initially gaining independence in the 1920s.The...
. Vladimir Tributs the Commander-in-Chief of the Baltic Fleet
Baltic Fleet
The Twice Red Banner Baltic Fleet - is the Russian Navy's presence in the Baltic Sea. In previous historical periods, it has been part of the navy of Imperial Russia and later the Soviet Union. The Fleet gained the 'Twice Red Banner' appellation during the Soviet period, indicating two awards of...
of the Soviet Union issued an order on 24 June 1941 warning on the paralysing actions of enemy paratrooper
Paratrooper
Paratroopers are soldiers trained in parachuting and generally operate as part of an airborne force.Paratroopers are used for tactical advantage as they can be inserted into the battlefield from the air, thereby allowing them to be positioned in areas not accessible by land...
squads aided by the "capitalist-kulak
Kulak
Kulaks were a category of relatively affluent peasants in the later Russian Empire, Soviet Russia, and early Soviet Union...
" portions of the populations, which allegedly had a large number of weapons that had not been turned in. The officers ordered the strengthening of defences of headquarters, army units and communications. Attacking "bandits" were to be shot on the spot. The struggle against saboteur
Saboteur
A saboteur is someone who commits sabotage.It may also refer to:*Morituri , a 1965 film also known as The Saboteur*Saboteur , a card game by Frederic Moyersoen, published in 2004...
s was the competence of the border guard units subordinate to the NKVD
NKVD
The People's Commissariat for Internal Affairs was the public and secret police organization of the Soviet Union that directly executed the rule of power of the Soviets, including political repression, during the era of Joseph Stalin....
(People's Commissariat of Internal Affairs of the Soviet Union).
Authority
The battalions were created in the territories near the front lineFront line
A front line is the farthest-most forward position of an armed force's personnel and equipment - generally in respect of maritime or land forces. Forward Line of Own Troops , or Forward Edge of Battle Area are technical terms used by all branches of the armed services...
during Operation Barbarossa
Operation Barbarossa
Operation Barbarossa was the code name for Germany's invasion of the Soviet Union during World War II that began on 22 June 1941. Over 4.5 million troops of the Axis powers invaded the USSR along a front., the largest invasion in the history of warfare...
, with the mission to secure the Red Army rear, assure the operation of strategically important enterprises and to destroy the valuable property that could not be evacuated. The units received authority to summarily execute
Summary execution
A summary execution is a variety of execution in which a person is killed on the spot without trial or after a show trial. Summary executions have been practiced by the police, military, and paramilitary organizations and are associated with guerrilla warfare, counter-insurgency, terrorism, and...
any suspicious person. Basically the tasks accounted for the implementation of a scorched earth policy.
Formation
The destruction battalions were formally voluntary while actually a number of troops were forcibly recruited. They were augmented by personnel considered ideologically solid, like members of KomsomolKomsomol
The Communist Union of Youth , usually known as Komsomol , was the youth division of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. The Komsomol in its earliest form was established in urban centers in 1918. During the early years, it was a Russian organization, known as the Russian Communist Union of...
and kolkhoz
Kolkhoz
A kolkhoz , plural kolkhozy, was a form of collective farming in the Soviet Union that existed along with state farms . The word is a contraction of коллекти́вное хозя́йство, or "collective farm", while sovkhoz is a contraction of советское хозяйство...
managers. There were no other requirements, so the ranks were socially varied, including a significant proportion of felons. The battalions were commanded by head managers of the regional
Raion
A raion is a type of administrative unit of several post-Soviet countries. The term, which is from French rayon 'honeycomb, department,' describes both a type of a subnational entity and a division of a city, and is commonly translated in English as "district"...
committee level. The Chief-of-Staff of Moscow was Dmitrii Kramarchuk.
During July 1941, a total of 1,755 destruction battalions were created, across all territories near the frontline, comprising about 328,000 personnel.
During July–August 1941 in the Belorussian SSR, chiefly in Vitebsk
Vitebsk
Vitebsk, also known as Viciebsk or Vitsyebsk , is a city in Belarus, near the border with Russia. The capital of the Vitebsk Oblast, in 2004 it had 342,381 inhabitants, making it the country's fourth largest city...
, Homel, Polesia
Polesia
Polesia is one of the largest European swampy areas, located in the south-western part of the Eastern-European Lowland, mainly within Belarus and Ukraine but also partly within Poland and Russia...
, Mohylew oblasts, 78 such battalions were created, comprising more than 13,000 personnel. Part of these were later transformed into Belarusian partisans
Belarusian partisans
Belarusian partisans were fighters in irregular military groups participating in the Belarusian resistance movement, including against Nazi Germany and collaborationism during World War II.- World War II :...
.
The battalions were also formed in the newly annexed territories of Karelo-Finland, Estonia
Estonia
Estonia , officially the Republic of Estonia , is a state in the Baltic region of Northern Europe. It is bordered to the north by the Gulf of Finland, to the west by the Baltic Sea, to the south by Latvia , and to the east by Lake Peipsi and the Russian Federation . Across the Baltic Sea lies...
, Latvia
Latvia
Latvia , officially the Republic of Latvia , is a country in the Baltic region of Northern Europe. It is bordered to the north by Estonia , to the south by Lithuania , to the east by the Russian Federation , to the southeast by Belarus and shares maritime borders to the west with Sweden...
, Lithuania
Lithuania
Lithuania , officially the Republic of Lithuania is a country in Northern Europe, the biggest of the three Baltic states. It is situated along the southeastern shore of the Baltic Sea, whereby to the west lie Sweden and Denmark...
, East Poland, Galicia, and Bessarabia
Bessarabia
Bessarabia is a historical term for the geographic region in Eastern Europe bounded by the Dniester River on the east and the Prut River on the west....
. Immediately after the beginning of Operation Barbarossa, combat squads were formed. Following the orders of the NKVD
NKVD
The People's Commissariat for Internal Affairs was the public and secret police organization of the Soviet Union that directly executed the rule of power of the Soviets, including political repression, during the era of Joseph Stalin....
, night watch squads were created in areas with large concentrations of the forest brothers
Forest Brothers
The Forest Brothers were Estonian, Latvian, and Lithuanian partisans who waged a guerrilla war against Soviet rule during the Soviet invasion and occupation of the three Baltic states during, and after, World War II...
. As firearm
Firearm
A firearm is a weapon that launches one, or many, projectile at high velocity through confined burning of a propellant. This subsonic burning process is technically known as deflagration, as opposed to supersonic combustion known as a detonation. In older firearms, the propellant was typically...
s were not provided the nightwatchmen
Nightwatchman
Nightwatchman can refer to one of the following:* Watchman * Nightwatchman , a lower-order batsman who comes in to bat higher up the order than usual near the end of the day's play* The Nightwatchman or Tom Morello, musician...
equipped themselves with sticks. On June 25, 1941 the first squads received fire arms from the reserves of the former paramilitary
Paramilitary
A paramilitary is a force whose function and organization are similar to those of a professional military, but which is not considered part of a state's formal armed forces....
organisations and through self-armament.
Actions in 1941
The fight against Anti-Soviet partisansAnti-Soviet partisans
Anti-Soviet partisans may refer to:*Chetniks*Čorny Kot*Forest Brothers*Forest Brothers *Green Army of Nikifor Grigoriev*Grey Wolves*Latvian national partisans*Lithuanian Activist Front*Lithuanian partisans...
and the implementation of the scorched earth tactics were accompanied by terror
Terrorism
Terrorism is the systematic use of terror, especially as a means of coercion. In the international community, however, terrorism has no universally agreed, legally binding, criminal law definition...
against the civilian population, which was treated as supporters or shelterers of forest brothers. The destruction battalions burnt down farms and some small boroughs. In turn, the members of the extermination battalions were at risk of repressions by the anti-Soviet partisans.
Estonia
Thousands of people including a large proportion of women and children were killed, while dozens of villages, schools and public buildings were burned to the ground. A school boy Tullio Lindsaar had all bones in his hands broken then was bayoneted for hoisting the Estonian tri-colourFlag of Estonia
The national flag of Estonia is a tricolour featuring three equal horizontal bands of blue , black, and white. The normal size is 105 × 165 cm...
. Mauricius Parts, son of the Estonian War of Independence veteran Karl Parts
Karl Parts
Karl Parts VR I/1, VR II/2, VR II/3 was an Estonia military commander during the Estonian War of Independence....
, was doused in acid. In August 1941, all residents of the village of Viru-Kabala were killed including a two-year old child and a six-day old infant. A partisan war broke out in response to the atrocities of the destruction battalions, with tens of thousands of men forming the Forest Brothers
Forest Brothers
The Forest Brothers were Estonian, Latvian, and Lithuanian partisans who waged a guerrilla war against Soviet rule during the Soviet invasion and occupation of the three Baltic states during, and after, World War II...
to protect the local population from these battalions. Occasionally, the battalions burned people alive. The destruction battalions murdered 1,850 people in Estonia. Almost all of them were partisans or unarmed civilians.
Another example of the destruction battalions' actions is the Kautla massacre
Kautla massacre
The Battle of Kautla was a battle between Soviet destruction battalions and Estonian Forest Brothers in Kautla, Estonia in July 1941. It included series of murders of civilians committed by destruction battalions, known as Kautla massacre....
, where twenty civilians were murdered and tens of farms destroyed. Many of the people were killed after torture
Torture
Torture is the act of inflicting severe pain as a means of punishment, revenge, forcing information or a confession, or simply as an act of cruelty. Throughout history, torture has often been used as a method of political re-education, interrogation, punishment, and coercion...
. The low toll of human deaths in comparison with the number of burned farms is due to the Erna long-range reconnaissance group breaking the Red Army blockade on the area, allowing many civilians to escape.
Post-war
The destruction battalions were restored after the retreat of German forces in the newly annexed areas to the Soviet Union. In 1945–46 they were renamed to narodnaya zaschita (people's defence), because of the notority their old name had gained in 1941. They were formed from local volunteers, from the most variable layers of the rural communities. They were tasked to guard, secure and support with arms all activities, directives and orders of the Soviet power, which the population could have sabotaged, intentionally avoided or directly resisted.The primary task of the destruction battalions was the fight against the armed resistance movement. This included terrorising the actual or potential supporters of forest brothers among the civilian population, participation in active combat, organisation of ambush and secret guard posts, reconnaissance
Reconnaissance
Reconnaissance is the military term for exploring beyond the area occupied by friendly forces to gain information about enemy forces or features of the environment....
and search patrols. The passive operations included guard and watch-keeping duties, convoy of detainees and arrested individuals as well as guarding cargo.
The destroyers guarded systematically institutions of power and economic objects in the rural areas. In a post-war situation where the factual state power in a rural municipality lay with the Soviet police, the Militsiya
Militsiya
Militsiya or militia is used as an official name of the civilian police in several former communist states, despite its original military connotation...
, the destroyers constituted a force, which guaranteed the implementation of the Soviet policies. A typical task was to force the farmers to fulfil public forestry, peat extraction and road construction obligations. No measures of coercion policy were implemented in the rural communities, which were not carried out or supervised by armed destroyers. They also fought against crime, both independently and as an additional force to the Militsiya.
The destruction battalions were great in size while they never became the efficient and active armed force which it was expected to come and which was meant to rapidly eradicate the forest brothers. Despite the primarily passive role of the destroyers in the fight against the resistance movement, they provided invaluable assistance to the active participants in this fight, state security institutions and internal troops. As local people the destroyers spoke the language, knew the people, landscape and circumstances, which was inadequate among the NKVD and internal troops. The destruction battalions were also very useful as an auxiliary force. The organisation was eventually dismissed in 1954.
Legal appraisal
The destruction battalions in the illegally annexed Baltic states were a collaboratorsCollaborationism
Collaborationism is cooperation with enemy forces against one's country. Legally, it may be considered as a form of treason. Collaborationism may be associated with criminal deeds in the service of the occupying power, which may include complicity with the occupying power in murder, persecutions,...
' organisation, which assisted the implementation of the criminal policy of the Soviet regime, and was thus a criminal organisation. It has been identified as such by the Riigikogu
Riigikogu
The Riigikogu is the unicameral parliament of Estonia. All important state-related questions pass through the Riigikogu...
the Parliament of Estonia
Estonia
Estonia , officially the Republic of Estonia , is a state in the Baltic region of Northern Europe. It is bordered to the north by the Gulf of Finland, to the west by the Baltic Sea, to the south by Latvia , and to the east by Lake Peipsi and the Russian Federation . Across the Baltic Sea lies...
. At the same time, the destroyers cannot be accused of crimes against humanity in corpore, because of the legal principles of the individual character of guilt
Guilt (law)
In criminal law, guilt is entirely externally defined by the state, or more generally a “court of law.” Being “guilty” of a criminal offense means that one has committed a violation of criminal law, or performed all the elements of the offense set out by a criminal statute...
and responsibility.